“I reckon the herd came up from the south,” Wright said. “No cause for them to keep their cattle on the caprock. If the cows don’t look good, it’s for some other reason.”
Hunt frowned. “Ben, were any of those cows down when you saw them?”
“Yeah, boss, quite a few.”
“They should’ve been grazing this early in the morning,” Hunt said.
Wright stared hard at the rancher. “Boss, you got something sticking in your craw?”
“Maybe,” Hunt said. “Throw the coffee on the fire and get the boys mounted, Kyle. We got things to do, people to annoy.”
The drizzle turned to rain and the clouds lowered. A gusting wind rippled the long grass as Jason Hunt and his punchers caught their first glimpse of the big herd.
Wright’s experienced eye swept the landscape ahead of him. “Ten thousand all right, all of them longhorns.” He studied the cattle. “Those cows are mighty thin, and they don’t seem inclined to move much.”
“Maybe they’ve been driven far,” Hunt said. “Now that they’re on good grass, whoever owns them probably plans to hold them here until they put on beef.”
“Speak of the devil,” Wright said. “This might be him coming.”
Jason Hunt was not a trusting man. He ordered his hands spread out on either side of him, the fastest guns—Wright, Carlos Sanchez, and Henry Brown—in the center.
A dozen horsemen came on at a canter, led by a big, yellow-haired man on a fine gray horse.
As they drew closer, Wright sized them up. “Those boys ain’t punchers.”
Hunt nodded. “Looks that way, don’t it.” He scanned the riders but none matched the description of the two who had kicked Lowery to death.
The man on the gray drew rein, savagely jerking the bit. As his men shook themselves into a skirmish line, he said, “You boys are trespassing and that means you suddenly got a choice. Ride away or be carried away.”
“Mister, this is open range and we don’t intend to leave until we get what we came for,” Hunt said.
The big, blond man’s handsome face showed surprise, as though he was not used to defiance or to Western men who didn’t scare worth a damn. He backed down, but only a little. Kyle Wright’s steady stare unsettled him. He recognized that Wright was the gun of the outfit and would be sudden.
“My name is Rube St. James and my sister Savannah has claimed all the land from here to a hundred miles east of the Pecos and south to the Rio Grande,” the big handsome man said, but his small, sensuous mouth hinted at cruelty and thick eyebrows shadowed his deep-set blue eyes as though they kept terrible secrets.
“That’s a fair piece of range your sister is claiming,” Wright said. “Pity the land is already taken.”
“That is no concern of mine,” St. James said. “We’re driving the herd west and we’ll trample underfoot anyone who stands in our way.” He smiled, showing the white incisors of a predator. “That’s a polite way of saying that any man who tries to stop us will die.”
Wright’s smile was less threatening, but just as effective. “We’ll stop you, mister. Depend on it. And I have a guarantee for you. If you open the ball right here and now, you’ll be the first to die.”
If St. James was intimidated, he didn’t let it show. “This is not the time nor the place. A reckoning will come soon, but not now.”
“Then I’ll look forward to us meeting again,” Wright said.
“Kyle, let it go. I have pressing business here.” Hunt stared at St. James, his eyes like chips of flint. “Two men in your employ murdered one of my hands. I want you to hand them over. It is my intention to hang them.”
“I have no such men,” St. James said. “My riders don’t brawl with cowboys.”
“The men I want dress like gamblers and wear a lawman’s badge.” Hunt saw a few of the men in the line glance at each other.
St. James blinked as though he feared his eyes would betray him. “I have no such men.” He waved a hand. “These are my riders, my friends, my compadres.”
“And not a puncher among them,” Wright said. “How do you plan to drive ten thousand head east with a dozen hired guns who’ve never nursed a cow in their lives?”
“If a twenty-a-month puncher can figure it out, then these men will do it even better,” St. James said. “I will not argue the point with you. Now clear out of my range.”
Kyle Wright, a man with a notoriously short fuse, was primed for a fight. “Suppose you try and make us.”
“Kyle, no!” Jason Hunt said. “Not today. There will be other days.”
Without another word the rancher swung his horse around and the crestfallen H bar H riders followed.
Laughter and derisive cheers rang out behind them and Wright’s face burned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The devil was in Kyle Wright. As the day shaded into night and the dejected, head-bowed men of the H bar H headed for home, it was an easy matter to turn his horse around and lose himself in the gloom.
Wright’s big American stud walked with his head high and his ears pricked forward. He was unused to night sounds since he’d never been used as a cowpony, but he stepped out well and kept to the trail, and Wright rode him on a loose rein.
Heat lightning flashed in the sky to the west and Wright was pleased. The shimmering sky could make the herd uneasy and more inclined to run. He kept to the shallow hollows between the hills, using every inch of cover he could find. His success depended on surprise, and he didn’t want some sharp-eyed night herder to spot his silhouette in the darkness and raise the alarm.
He patted the stud’s neck and smiled. Rube St. James was big on threats and bluster, but how would he handle his first taste of war in a land of hard men living rough lives?
Ten minutes later, Wright came upon the herd, a black sea of cattle that stretched into darkness. Lightning flashes lit the sky and here and there bobbing horns glowed with the eerie green incandescence of St. Elmo’s fire. Wright slid his rifle out of the boot and carried it upright, the butt on his right thigh. He swung away from the herd, not wishing to stampede it . . . at least not yet.
In the distance, a campfire twinkled like a sentinel star in a dark sky. He kneed his horse forward, the only sound the lowing of the stock, the creak of saddle leather, and the soft footfalls of his mount. The air smelled of ten thousand cattle, an odor that overpowered all else. As he rode close to a lone wild oak, an irritated owl demanded his identity. “Just me, that’s whooo,” he whispered, and rode on.
Anxiety twisting in his gut like a knife blade, he kept to the shadows as he rode closer to the camp. A holdover from his Comanche-fighting days, nothing on his horse or person was shiny. He’d allowed even the brass buckle of his cartridge belt to tarnish so that it didn’t gleam in moonlight or the bright Texas sun.
As Wright rode along the outer fringe of the herd, an odd realization struck him . . . no one was riding night herd. A herd that size needed four or five nighthawks, maybe more since the cattle were skittish, way off their home range, and ready to run. His face was grim. Did this bunch have anybody with a lick of cow sense? Obviously they didn’t, and that’s why they were about to tie into a heap of trouble.
He rode as close to the camp as he dared and studied the layout with farseeing eyes. It was difficult to count heads as men came and went between tents in flickering firelight, but he figured they were all there—Rube St. James and a dozen gunmen drinking too deep and laughing too loud and not a soul with the herd.
Wright’s cowman’s soul was outraged. He nodded to himself. All right. Those boys deserved everything that was coming to them.
He turned and retraced his steps to the very eastern edge of the herd. Under a flaring sky, the restless longhorns kept bunching, then separating and then they’d bunch again and drift. A seasoned nighthawk would not have allowed them to drift. He would have ridden among them, his tuneless renditions of “Goodbye Old Paint” or “Far and Away” keeping them calm and separated.
Of course, Kyle Wright didn’t want the cattle calm. He wanted them running due west, into and through the St. James camp and leaving carnage in their wake.
It was time.
Wright racked his Winchester and fired.
All hell broke loose.
For perhaps several seconds the herd stood, then they were off and running, stampeding westward away from the noise of the gun. Wright fired again and again, and the stampede gathered steam, the cattle’s pounding hooves making a sound like thunder. The herd charged through the shallow valley like water from a broken dam, a dangerous, unstoppable force of nature. In the distance, rifles banged as the hired guns tried to shoot the leaders and turn the herd. But it was a hopeless task, like using a peashooter to stop a charging buffalo. A thick cloud of rising dust mingled with the darkness and visibility dropped to a few yards.
His devil prompting him, Wright grinned and decided to add to the misery of Rube St. James and his gunmen.
Riding across churned-up ground in the wake of the thundering herd, he pulled his bandana over his mouth and nose. Lost in ramparts of rising dust, he was hidden from sight. He rode for several minutes, his horse picking its way around dead cattle, and then in the near distance he heard men yell. Swinging hard to his right, he rode out of the dust cloud into clear air. His rifle still at the ready, he headed toward the camp but ahead of him he saw only darkness and heard the back and forth shouts of frightened men. Somewhere amid the chaos, a man screamed incessantly, piercing shrieks that suggested serious and painful injuries.
Dipping down into a draw among mesquite, Wright drew rein and again studied the night. He saw nothing. His plan had been to take a few pots and shake up St. James and his cohorts, but he had no clear targets, only screams and voices in the gloom.
Wright had won a victory of sorts, but it was just the opening skirmish of what could be a long war. The herd was scattered to hell and gone and without experienced drovers it would take days, maybe weeks to round them up. Rube St. James would not push the herd west any time soon and for the moment, Wright was content to leave it at that.
Used up, he booted his rifle and rode out of the draw, looking forward to coffee and his bunk. He saw lightning flash, heard a roar of thunder, and felt something hard slam into his right shoulder. . . .
Then blackness took him and he felt nothing at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“We thought he might have come this way, beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,” the young puncher said.
“No, I haven’t seen him,” Kate said. “How long has Kyle been gone?”
“Since last night, ma’am. Mr. Hunt had a powwow with the owner of the big herd, well his sister is the owner—”
“A woman owns the herd?” Kate asked, surprised.
“Yes, ma’am. But we didn’t talk to her.”
“And it was after the powwow that Kyle disappeared?” Kate confirmed.
“That’s the way of it, Mrs. Kerrigan.”
“Did you hear gunshots, anything like that?”
“One of the boys thought he heard a couple shots, but he couldn’t be sure. Anyway, we though Kyle was still with us. The trail was real dark, you know.”
Kate was coping with noises of her own. Jazmin Salas’s baby cried and fussed in her cradle, demanding to be fed. Up on the rise, Moses, expecting trouble, discharged the old loads in his Dragoon, taking his own sweet time about it. Marco Salas hammered iron at his forge and Count Andropov bellowed instructions at Trace and Quinn on how to erect what he called his general store, but did no work himself. The girls had discovered an indigo snake and shrieked in unison as it wound toward them. Only Frank Cobb was quiet, attentively listening to the exchange between Kate and the H bar H puncher.
She frowned. Raising her voice above the din, she asked, “What is this person’s name?”
“His name is Rube—”
“His sister’s name.”
“Savannah St. James, ma’am. You ever hear of her, Mrs. Kerrigan?”
“No, I have not. With a ten-dollar name like that I would remember.” Kate kept at it. “What did Rube say at the meeting?”
“Only that his herd is moving west of the Pecos and he’s laying claim to all the range that’s worth claiming. Says he’ll gun anybody that gets in his way.” The young puncher’s eyes flicked to Frank Cobb. “He’s a pistolero. Real bad news, I reckon.” Then to Kate, “I got to get back on the scout, Mrs. Kerrigan. When we find Kyle, we’ll let you know.”
“Hold up. We’re coming with you.” Kate turned. “Trace, let Quinn work on the store. Get your rifle and saddle up.”
Trace grinned and let go of the beam he held upright. Immediately, the rickety structure of the general store swayed and fell in a crashing heap. “Fix that, Quinn,” he said as Count Andropov turned the air blue with a string of Slavic curses and Quinn added a few Anglo-Saxon ones of his own.
The puncher—his name was Loop Davis and he was sixteen years old that summer—retraced the route the H bar H men had taken to meet the St. James herd. “Mr. Hunt said he’d search to the south, then swing north again. We’ll meet him along the trail.”
As they rode, four sets of eyes scanned the land around them, a vast, rolling expanse of long grass where a man’s body might lie hidden in a hollow and never be found. Yesterday’s rain was just a memory and the day was hot, the burned-out sky cloudless.
After an hour, Loop’s young eyes saw a rider emerge through the shimmering heat haze and canter toward them. “That’s Monk Boone. They must have found Kyle.” He turned to Kate. “Nobody knows what Monk’s real given name is, Mrs. Kerrigan, but he was a monk for a spell when he was younger. He’s kinda sad all the time, is ol’ Monk.”
And ol’ Monk looked sad indeed. A tall, skinny drink of water with the face of a middle-aged saint, his voice sounded like it came from the depths of a sepulcher. “Howdy, Loop.”
“Colonel Hunt find Kyle?” Loop asked.
“He found him.”
After a moment, Loop said, “Well?”
“It ain’t good, Loop.”
“What happened?”
“Kyle is dead.”
“Dead how?”
“Hung dead. That’s how, Loop.”
“Where is Mr. Hunt?” Kate asked.
“Up the trail a ways. I was sent out to find Loop.” Boone removed his hat, revealing sparse brown hair. “You must be Mrs. Kerrigan. I’m right pleased to meet you, ma’am, if that’s in keeping with the sad occasion.”
“Take us to Mr. Hunt, Monk,” Kate said. “And I’m pleased to meet you, too.”
If Jason Hunt was surprised that Kate Kerrigan and the others had joined in the search, he didn’t let it show. He merely touched his hat brim then said, “You see it, Mrs. Kerrigan.”
Kyle Wright hung from the bleached branch of a dead cottonwood that stood next to a dry creek. His purple tongue poked out of his mouth, his chest was bare, and someone had used a knife to cut words into the white skin. Stampeder & Murderer.
“For God’s sake get him down,” Kate said. Her face was pale and her rosary was in her hand.
Hunt nodded. “I wanted all the boys to see this. All right. Get Kyle down and we’ll bury him at the H bar H.”
“And after that?” one of the hands asked.
“There’s no after that,” Hunt said. “Loop and Monk will take Kyle back to the ranch. You boys wash his body and then lay him out like a Christian and a white man. When I get back, we’ll bury him.”
“What are your intentions, Mr. Hunt?” Kate asked.
“I aim to hunt down the men who did this,” the rancher said. “Now two of my boys are dead and there must be a reckoning. Mrs. Kerrigan, you got no call to get involved in this, but I’d surely like your son and Frank Cobb at my side.”
“I’ll ride with you,” Kate insisted. “I can handle a rifle.”
That was met with stony silence.
At the dead cottonwood, Loop and a couple other men gently lower
ed Kyle Wright’s body to the ground. Above them, a single buzzard quartered the sky.
Finally Trace said, “No, Ma. You’re needed back at the house. You have too many people depending on you. The girls and Quinn need you there.”
“Trace speaks the truth, ma’am,” Hunt said. “I think the time will come soon when you’ll need to fight to protect what’s yours. But it will be on your own ground, not here.”
Kate turned to look at Cobb. “Frank? Have you anything to say on my behalf?”
The segundo shook his head. “Trace and Mr. Hunt said it best, Kate. What’s ahead of us is rough work for mighty rough men. Whether you wanted it or not we’d be always looking out for you. A man who gets distracted like that can get himself killed.”
Kate sat her saddle frowning. Then she made up her mind. “I’ll ride to the H bar H with Loop and Monk and help them lay out Kyle’s body and then I’ll pray over him.” She glared at Cobb. “That’s women’s work.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Loop Davis, Monk Boone, and Kate Kerrigan left with Kyle Wright’s body.
Trace and Cobb stood with Jason Hunt and four of his hands. They numbered seven, but all were good gun hands and had shown sand in the past.
After riding for thirty minutes, they saw the path of the stampeding herd stretching away from them like a dirt road, cutting a swath a hundred yards wide across the grassland. Carcasses of downed cattle mounded the flat all the way to the shimmering horizon. Trace counted fifty before he gave up the task. He reckoned there was probably three times that number.
Hunt drew rein and studied the stampede road for a couple minutes, then he swung out of the saddle. The rancher kneeled and studied one of the dead cows, then he moved to another, his face troubled. Finally, he waved a hand at Sanchez. “Carlos, come over here and take a look.”
Sanchez had ridden for Charlie Goodnight and was cow-savvy. He examined the carcass for several minutes until Hunt said, “Well, what do you think?”
“You know what it is, boss,” Sanchez said.
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