Rustlers

by Orrin Russell

  ‘Flank steak.’

  ‘That’ll do me.’

  ‘I see you’ve picked up a grulla. Everything go alright?’

  Charles grunted in response.

  ‘Any women down there worth seeing?’ asked Dan. He and his brother had just arrived to the fire and had taken up plates in their hands.

  Charles gave a look to Balum and turned back to the brothers. ‘None for you boys. Town’s a shithole. Not a restaurant, bar, nothing. You young bucks better just hold on tight; doesn’t look like you’ll get a chance with womenfolk till we hit Cheyenne.’

  They ate flank steaks and more of the same wild onions and rode out all five into the valley. Balum saddled up the grulla. It was a gamble, buying a horse on the fly as they had, not knowing its history. Most any horse could be a cattle horse, but there were those worth their salt and those that were not.

  This one was. It could cut a bull out of a patch of cholla without scratching its rider, and it always took the correct side of the cow without any prodding. Balum rode him hard that day, driving cattle out from the northern edge of the valley down into the center with the growing herd. He rode him the next day as well. He wanted to give the roan a rest, and wanted to test the grit of the new mount. In the months ahead there might come a time when he would need to know just how hard he could push that horse.

  The herd slowly grew. It was mostly Texas longhorns. There were heifers, cows, bulls and calves mixed together, and the men rounded them up one and the same.

  Joe had taken the role of cook. He didn’t make anything fancy, but he had a knack for finding wild tubers and made the coffee hot, so the men kept their complaints to themselves.

  Although Charles was technically trail boss, there was little hierarchy to show for it. He worked as hard as anyone else, and waited for others to eat before serving himself.

  They woke early and bedded down late. The days ran together. All that differed was the size of the herd and the slow change in scenery as they edged the cattle eastward down the valley. They were all short on horses. They had no remuda to speak of. Each rider had one spare. It made the job that much tougher.

  For as tired as they were when they rode into camp at suppertime they would find the energy to tell each other stories. Dan and William would suggest from time to time that they ride south into the village and stir up some action, and Balum and Charles would laugh, having seen the sorry state of that village firsthand.

  One day a bull turned on William and put a horn through the boy’s pants. He came riding back to camp with one whole side of the trousers ripped off and nothing but a scratch on his thigh. No one could explain how the boy’s leg wasn’t torn off with it, including William.

  Balum put his back into the work. On those long days when the heat baked down he would start to second-guess the logic of what they were involved in. That boy William could have easily died. A roundup and drive were possibilities for easy deaths. The payoff at the end was a gamble. A big gamble, but a massive payout if all went to plan. A normal drive could earn a cowhand a bit over a hundred dollars. With the five of them going in as near-even partners he had the possibility of walking out with thousands. More money than he had seen in his lifetime.

  His thoughts turned to Consuelo at times. He remembered the smell of her neck, and the feel of her body pressed to his. He remembered how she asked if she would see him again, and he asked that same question to himself.

  Five weeks in, the herd had grown to just over a thousand cattle. They had reached the far east end of the valley and the land further on turned dry and sandy.

  They had had many a conversation over the campfire at night on their predicament of unbranded cattle. The route they had chosen through western Texas, the New Mexico Territory and Colorado would take them through heavy ranch country. A herd of over a thousand unbranded cattle would raise concern from local ranchers and invite herd-cutters to bear down on them.

  But their cattle weren’t calves anymore. Far from it. Some of those Texas longhorns would push the scales at half a ton. Their horns could easily measure over five feet across. Putting brands on those beasts wouldn’t just take time, it would risk injury or death.

  The conversation would come up. They would discuss the risks of confrontation on the drive, and how they could prove stray cattle were not getting roped into their herd. Then they would come back to their other options; they had none.

  And so it was that as they reached the far end of the valley and the cattle had eaten and trampled the last of the good grass, they made plans to push northwards.

  They took two days of rest, sorely needed and much deserved. They gathered wild onions and nopales, but with no chuckwagon to store them in, they amassed only what could be easily carried by the spare horses.

  For most of those two days they listened to William and Dan dream of making a quick dash to the village to the South. Charles revealed a pint of whisky he had been holding onto for all those weeks, and they passed the bottle around. With the liquor heating their blood, the boy’s aching for the sins of a town grew more comical. The desire spread to Balum as well. The whisky felt good in his throat, and it brought up more thoughts of Consuelo.

  But northward was their future, and on the morning of the second day of March they bunched the cattle and started them moving. An old bull with a dark, scarred hide took the lead, and they crossed over a small ridge and left the valley behind them.

  8

  The land returned to desert. Dust rose under the thousands of hooves pounding into the dry earth. It drifted up from the ground and over the tops of the animals, creating a slow moving cloud that enveloped their passage. If they moved slowly they could not escape it, and by moving quickly they only stirred up more dust.

  Balum rode drag. He sat atop the roan, the grulla up front with Joe and the rest of the spares. They had agreed that Joe would take on duties as wrangler. In exchange he would be spared night watch.

  Balum pulled his bandana tight over his face. It covered his mouth and nose, but the dust still found its way in. There was no way to shield his eyes; he kept them squinted as if staring into the sun.

  It wasn’t long before many of the cattle wised up to the fact they were leaving the good grasslands behind. Those in the back would turn around, itching to head back to the valley. Cattle bunched up in the middle would stop walking, and those on the sides would turn, attempting to cut out from the herd. It took heavy prodding and a sting of the rope to keep them moving forward.

  A herd that size, all wild stock, herded by five men was nearly too much. They made only twelve miles that day. When they reached a flat open spot to make camp for the night they bunched the cattle tight and rode in circles around them, preventing the most ornery ones from bailing out.

  But the ornery ones outnumbered the cowboys. It took all five to keep the herd from heading backwards. The men had no time to unpack their bedrolls or to heat up a bite to eat. The cattle were unsettled. Home was too close.

  The men had no choice. After a short conference, they agreed there was no remedy but to push the cattle through the night. They would keep them moving, tire them out, and not stop until they found water. If they traveled far enough and their throats dried out enough, the cattle wouldn’t turn back once they drank.

  Night fell. They moved the herd by starlight. The cold crept in and the dust clouded up again just as it had during daylight.

  Balum took flank. He switched the roan out for the grulla. With the cattle beginning to tire and his horse a natural herder, keeping the odd cow from leaving the herd seemed almost simple compared to the mess that riding drag had to deal with.

  They rode without stopping. There was no sound to the desert at night, and no sound would have been heard had there been any. The trampling of the longhorns created a symphony of drumbeats that did not rise or fall in volume. Nor did it change in cadence. It filled the crisp night air with a constant thunder that stretched out into the endless blackness above and around them
.

  The sun rose many hours later. They kept riding, eager for its warmth. It lit the land around them. The tannish rock, the dust, the cholla and mesquite appeared out of the dark of night. There was no hint of the green pastures they had abandoned and no reason to think such land would appear again. The miles stretched on, with nothing to graze on and nothing to drink.

  They had talked about this. They knew the first push out of the valley would be the most difficult, but none of them had any real idea just how much desert they needed to cross to reach the chain of Coahuila valleys leading into Texas. They had hoped no more than twenty miles.

  They had over twenty miles behind them at sunrise, and no end of desert in sight. With the cattle moving mindlessly in rhythm they dared not stop.

  Balum felt the tiredness in his horse. It’s head dragged, but the cattle were too tired to make trouble. The sun rose higher still in the sky and t he cold quickly left his body and was replaced by warmth. Then miserable heat. Sweat ran down his forehead and into the dirt-stained bandana. His stomach had quit growling several hours ago, but his throat never lost its constant urge to swallow.

  He nearly dozed off in the saddle, surrounded as he was in an otherworld of dust, his vision cut off from all but the cattle to the side of him. He was jolted out of his fog when Dan rode up from drag. That meant Balum could take point, and finally leave the dust behind him. He picked his horse up to a trot and swung wide of the herd. The animals had spread out and covered a good mile of terrain.

  Getting out from the dust cloud gave him a chance to see the land again. It was changing. They weren’t riding over pure sand and dirt anymore; they were onto thin patches of grass interspersed with chaparral.

  The front side of the herd was spread wide. He spotted Joe ahead of him with the small remuda and rode to him.

  ‘Balum!’ he shouted, lowering his bandana. ‘You ready to wash the dust out of your mouth?’

  ‘With what? I couldn’t squeeze enough piss out of me to fill a whisky shooter.’

  ‘We’re close. The land is changing. Look at the horses. They can smell it.’

  Balum looked at the chain of spares. It was true. Their heads were up and their ears pricked. Even the grulla beneath him had picked up his step.

  ‘Find William,’ shouted Joe. ‘He’s riding point somewhere. When these cows get to smelling water they’ll make a run for it. If he’s in front he’s liable to get trampled.’

  Balum didn’t wait. He put the grulla to a run, angling in front of the herd. He made Will out, the boy’s horse only a few feet from the old bull with the dark hide. Balum waved his arm at him, motioning for him to follow. They rode at a gallop, racing for the edge of the herd.

  The longhorns had gotten the smell of water into their nostrils and those in front had started to quicken their stride. Just as Balum and William reached the edge, the cattle broke into a run. The thunder of hooves grew in intensity, drowning out anything the men could say to each other.

  Balum and William raced forward lest they be ridden down by the hooves of a thousand desperate cattle.

  What lay ahead was a river. It measured not more than thirty feet across and four at its deepest. The cows crashed into it, careening over its small banks. As more cattle rushed into the water they pushed each other clear out of the river and onto the land on the opposite side. Eventually the herd fanned out until all had space enough to drink.

  Balum and William found themselves on the westernmost end of the herd. They dismounted and let their horses drink, but they restrained themselves from drinking directly. Where they stood was downstream, and with over a thousand cows standing and drinking upstream of them, it would have been foolish to dip their heads in. They waited instead for their horses to get their fill. Once they had, they rode up the edge of the river, from one end of the herd to the other.

  On the far east end were Charles, Joe and Dan. They were laying on the muddy bank, laughing and carrying on, their shirt fronts and faces sopping wet.

  ‘Get yourselves a drink boys!’ shouted Charles on seeing the two ride up. ‘And say goodbye to that sonofabitch desert!’

  9

  They had been lucky and they knew it. If the river had been any deeper or had any current to it, many of the cattle would have been drowned, swept away and lost. The way they had charged it, crazed with thirst and all of their cow sense abandoned, could not be repeated.

  They let the cattle graze. Convincing them to cross the river was simple, as the better and abundant grass clearly grew on the other side. With the cattle content, the men heated up their last can of beans. They were all dog-tired, though there existed some feeling of adrenaline in them. The soul-sapping drive across the desert country and the stampede to the river that followed had lit their nerves.

  They sat in a circle and pulled the beans from the fire before they had a chance to truly heat through.

  ‘You all know what this river leads up to?’ Charles asked them.

  They shook their heads.

  ‘The Rio Grande. That means Big River. I don’t even need Balum to translate for me. And they didn’t name it so for nothing. It’s wide and it’s deep and if those cows stampede into it like they did here we lose ‘em.’

  ‘What’s our plan Charles?’ asked Balum. ‘Let’s get our heads wrapped around the route so we’re thinking along the same lines.’

  ‘We’ll follow this little stream right up to the Rio Grande. We’ll hit it somewhere around where the Pecos River dumps into it. That’ll be a hell of a crossing but we’ll get it done. We can follow the Pecos straight up to the New Mexico Territory. We’ll keep their bellies full of grass and their throats wet and shouldn’t have any more senseless rushes for water.’

  ‘I think that’s the last can of beans,’ said Dan. ‘Pretty much everything’s gone; bacon, flour, coffee.’

  ‘I’ll be goddamned if I drive these cattle to Cheyenne without coffee. We need to stock up on supplies. It wouldn’t hurt to have a couple spare horses in the mix, and there’s no two ways about it; we need a chuckwagon. We need rope, ammunition, food, blankets and a whole lot else.’

  ‘Aw shoot, that means we’re going to town!’ said Dan, and grabbed his brother by the shoulders and shook him.

  Charles laughed. ‘Yeah, that means we’re going to town. But don’t get your hopes up boys. Fort Sumner is the only place with life, and that’s well too far North. We’ll stop at whatever we come to first.’

  ‘Suits us,’ said Dan.

  They spent the rest of the day lazing by the river. The boys dropped a line in and pulled out a couple fish and they scaled and gutted them and ate them for dinner.

  Early the next morning they broke camp and bunched the cattle. They weren’t trail-broke yet but after the desert crossing they were well on their way. The old dark-skinned bull found himself in the lead again, and they started them north, the shallow river on their left.

  Compared to the desert, one could almost say it was easy going. The cattle had water and grass, enough so that they didn’t miss home so much. The horses were showing stress though, and the men as well.

  Food had become scarce and they were back to the pemmican. There was little game in the area, and even if there was, the men were too busy to go hunting for it.

  The days were long, and with two men needed for nightwatch they were short on sleep. They came across no one. No peasant farmers, travelers or indians. It was just open sky and cattle as far as one could see.

  They reached the Rio Grande on a moonless night. They bedded the cattle down and ate cold pemmican and slept without discussion.

  In the morning Balum saddled the roan and rode to the river’s edge. The spring rains had begun, and snow was melting in the Rockies. The rivers had started to rise. This was good for the wellbeing of the cattle, but for crossing a river such as this it could mean the loss of the herd and possibly the loss of human life.

  Balum rode east along the water’s edge. Eastward lay the Pecos River, and
the best shot at finding humanfolk. They needed a spot not too deep and not too wide. If too deep the cattle might panic and attempt to turn back in the middle. This would set the herd to milling, and it was a surefire way to lose head. Too wide and they could tire. A tired cow could be swept downstream with less current than one would assume.

  He found a spot six miles out that could work. He rode on another few miles in the hopes of finding somewhere even simpler, but there was none.

  Back at camp the men had saddled up and the herd was on its feet. Balum appraised them of the situation. They would need to keep the herd narrow while they filed in or they would hit deep water. That meant stretching them out thin before they reached the river, and those who rode flank would have their work cut out.

  The situation discussed, and the plan made, there was no cause for waiting. The old bull took his place at the head and they got them walking. It was that old bull that helped out more than any of the cowboys could have. He followed Joe and the spare horses into the river without hesitation, unflinching and showing no panic.

  The rest followed. William and Dan bunched them at the river’s edge, keeping them to the shallowest ground. It took time for the herd to wade through, and as the hundreds of hooves churned the riverbed and eroded the bank, the river filled with thick mud.

  By the time Balum and Charles brought up the rear the cattle had eroded enough of the bottom out of the river to bring the level up to the cattle’s necks. Some of the weaker animals began to hesitate, and both William and Dan entered the water to ease them through. Each roped a problematic cow and got them out and up the other side.

  Balum had the last of them over the bank when he heard a shout from the other side. He looked up and saw Dan motioning upriver.

  Headed downstream were several massive logs careening through the water. They would have measured sixty feet long easy.