Hunt frowned. “Charlie Goodnight taught you well, and I want to hear you say it.”
“This cow had tick fever.” Sanchez, a small, black-eyed man, waved a hand. “And probably all the others you see dead. They were the weakest of the bunch and they fell and were trampled.”
“That could mean the whole herd may be sick,” Hunt said.
“No, boss. It means the whole herd is sick,” Sanchez said. “And it will infect any other cattle in its path.”
“Damn it all,” Hunt swore. “It could wipe out the whole range.”
“Tick fever spreads like wildfire, boss. If the big herd comes east, all you can do is move your cattle out of the way.”
“No, we’ll turn them, by God.” Hunt looked at Cobb. “You heard all this?”
“I sure did. Tick fever is not something to mess with.”
“And?” Hunt said, slightly irritated.
“All we can do is turn the herd,” Cobb said. “We can’t shoot ten thousand cattle, even if we had all the ammunition in the world.”
“Frank, you reckon this St. James gal knows her cattle are infected?” Hunt asked.
“Probably not. From what I’ve seen, nobody in that outfit knows the first thing about cattle.”
“Then let’s go educate her,” Colonel Hunt said.
Trace, riding scout, discovered two bodies about fifty yards apart lying in the scar cut across the grassland by the stampeding herd. He recognized the pounded mass of jelly flattened into the earth as males, but that was about as far as he could go.
“Looks like they tried to turn the herd on foot.” Hunt shook his head. “My God in heaven, how stupid can these people be?”
“Stupidity can make some people dangerous. They do bad things without considering the consequence.” Cobb smiled. “Something to bear in mind, I guess.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do for these two.” Hunt stared ahead of him. “Let’s see if we can find any more stupid dead people.”
The young gunman lying in the wreckage of what had been the St. James camp was not dead . . . but he seemed close to it. When he saw Hunt and his riders move toward him, he picked up the Colt that lay beside him and yelled, “That’s far enough!”
Hunt was not inclined to be sociable. “Touch off that hogleg and I’ll hang you, boy.” He rode to within a few feet of the man and swung out of the saddle. “Let the pistol drop.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the kid dropped the gun and said, “Both my legs are busted. Damned cow rolled over them.”
Hunt received that information in silence. He drew his own revolver and said, “I’m going to ask you one question, boy. You give me the wrong answer and I’ll scatter your brains. Understood?”
“Damn you, my legs are broke!” the young gunman cried.
“Do you want to hear the question?” Hunt asked.
The kid looked at the men who were still mounted, his stare lingering for a moment on Trace. But, like the others, he saw nothing in his stony expression that offered sympathy.
“Ask your damned question, old man,” the gunman said.
“Did you have any hand in the hanging of my foreman?” Hunt asked.
“Hell, no,” the kid said. “I didn’t even know he’d been hung. After the stampede, Rube brought a man here who’d been shot. Rube beat him up some, then he and the others put the man on a horse and left. My legs was broke so they told me to stay here.”
“Where is St. James now?” Cobb asked.
“He’s with his sister, I guess. She come up from San Antone to join the drive but that was a few days ago.”
“The herd is scattered to hell and gone,” Cobb said. “Who’s rounding them up?”
“A bunch of men like me who don’t know nothin’ about rounding up cows,” the gunman said. “But I heard Rube say he could hire vaqueros down on the border. Maybe that’s where he is.”
“Where’s your hoss, boy?” Hunt asked.
“Rube and them took it. We lost a bunch of horses in the stampede.” The young man shook his head. “Your foreman sure played hob.”
Hunt stared on the gunman. “Yeah, well, he ain’t likely to do that ever again, is he?”
“I didn’t kill him,” the young gunman said, his face defiant.
“No, but you were a part of it,” Hunt offered.
Henry Brown turned his cold blue eyes to the rancher. “Want me to gun him, boss?”
Hunt shook his head. “No, leave him be. It’s Rube St. James I want and them that’s with him.”
“You can’t leave me alone out here,” the young gunman cried. “Rube ain’t coming back for me. He don’t give a damn.”
“And frankly, neither do I. You should have thought about all this when you tied in with him.” Hunt turned his back and stepped to his horse. He had seconds to live.
The young man retrieved the gun he’d dropped, thumbed back the hammer, and yelled, “Stop right there, damn you!”
Without turning, Hunt said, “Go to hell.”
The gunman fired, one shot into the center of Hunt’s back. Henry Brown’s bullet slammed into the young man’s forehead and killed him instantly, but he was too late.
His spine shattered, Jason Hunt also lay dead on the ground.
Trace Kerrigan and the other riders dismounted and gathered around Hunt’s body.
Cobb kneeled beside the rancher, then looked up and shook his head. “He’s gone.”
“I left it too late,” Henry Brown said, his young face pale.
“You did what you had to do.” Cobb rose to his feet. “You were faster than any of us.”
“Not fast enough.” Brown said. “Why did that little son-of-a-bitch shoot Mr. Hunt? He must have known we’d kill him.”
“Because the gun was all he knew,” Cobb said. “That’s how he’d been taught to settle a dispute and doing it any other way didn’t even enter into his thinking. You know how many kids there are just like him in Texas? The gun removes all difficulties and solves all problems. Their fathers and brothers who fought in the war taught them that.”
“High-sounding words, Cobb,” Brown said. “But the next one of them St. James boys I see, I’ll shoot first and save the fancy words for his funeral.”
There were nods of approval from the other H bar H punchers.
Trace Kerrigan said, “That sets just fine with me.”
They were angry, bitter men and the stage was set for a bloody war that in later years only the dead would not regret.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Kate Kerrigan stood in dappled moonlight under the ancient oak that stood in front of the H bar H ranch house. Coyotes yipped in the distance as though mourning the dead and inside the oil lamps were dimmed and cast little light.
Cobb stepped out of the house and saw Kate. Even in the gloom, her beauty burned like a candle flame. He stepped beside her. “Can you bear my company, Kate?”
She turned and smiled. “I’d appreciate it, Frank, especially tonight. I see hard times coming down.”
“Predicting the future is like driving a galloping four-horse team down a country road in the dark. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen.”
“I wish I could believe that. The Irish have the gift. I can see a fair piece down that dark country road.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you, Kate,” he promised.
“I know, Frank. And I appreciate your concern.” The moonlight touched her hair gently, like a shy lover. “I have so little, a cabin and a few cattle. Why would someone want to take it from me?”
“I don’t know, Kate. I can’t think like Rube St. James and his sister. I don’t know what drives people like that. Greed, power, a need to hurt others? I just don’t know.”
Kate managed a smile. “Well, the danger is over for now. It will take them a while to gather the herd again.”
“It’s not over. Jason Hunt and Kyle Wright are dead. There’s got to be a reckoning.”
“No, Frank. I don’t wa
nt that. What can punchers do against professional gunmen? All we’d do is to fritter away our strength. We must fight St. James, I agree, but on ground and at a time of our own choosing.”
“They lost four men as a result of the stampede,” Cobb said. “Henry Brown is good with a gun and so is Carlos Sanchez. If we hit St. James now while he’s on the ropes, we can take him.”
“How many men has he, Frank?”
“I don’t know, maybe eight or so, nine including St. James himself. I don’t know if he’s any good with the iron.”
Kate shook her head. “It’s too thin, Frank. I won’t let it happen that way. You could all be killed. We have time for me to talk with some of the other ranchers and enlist their help. We’ll gather our strength and be ready.”
Cobb, deeply aware of the moonlight that enhanced Kate’s spectacular loveliness, didn’t let his irritation show. “Kate, there are only two ranches that count, the H bar H and yours. Sure there are a few one-loop outfits to the north of us, but they’d be of little help. We need pistol fighters and all we’d get is a few used-up married men with kids and money worries.”
“I hope I can prove you wrong, Frank. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go pray over the dead.”
“Then I’ll join you. But me and God ain’t exactly on speaking terms.”
Kate was serious when she said, “He’ll listen though. Depend on it.”
“They’ll listen to me. I’ll make them listen,” Savannah St. James said.
“And if they don’t?” Rube asked.
“Then I’ll shoot and hang them all, man, woman, and child. I need that land and I’ll take it.” Savannah sipped bloodred wine from a crystal glass. “What of the herd?”
“The vaqueros I hired say we lost no more than three hundred head,” Rube said. “But some of the others are sick.”
The woman dismissed that with a wave of her elegant hand. “Cows are always sick. What news of the guns?”
“You’ll recall I wired Jack Hickam from San Antone. I reckon he’ll be here in a few days. He’s coming down from Fort Concho and Pete Slicer is with him.”
“Only those two?”
“Savannah, when you got Hickam and Slicer that’s all you need.”
“Reuben, when you have Hickam and Slicer . . . please don’t lapse into the vernacular of the barbarians. It does not become you.” She rose to her feet and her rust-colored silk dress made a soft sound. She glanced out the window and sighed. “A wilderness populated by savages. I must get back to Boston, Paris, London . . . anywhere but this howling wasteland.”
As it so often did, Savannah’s restless mind changed course. “Reuben, that man you hanged, did he suffer? I want him to have suffered.”
“It took him a long time to die, sister mine.”
“I asked you did he suffer?”
“Yes, he did. At the end, he didn’t know where he was or who he was.”
“Good. That makes me feel better.” She dropped a little curtsy. “You are most gracious.”
Rube smiled and gave a little bow. “Your obedient servant, Savannah.”
Savannah St. James was a once ravishing beauty who’d been, in turns, the mistress of a German prince, a rich American industrialist, the English actor Drinkwater Meadows, and more recently Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico. But as she approached her fortieth year, though still a beautiful woman, her loveliness was fading fast. The worm of age was in the rose and no one knew that better than Savannah St. James herself. Maximilian was dead by a Benito Juárez firing squad, Charlotte, the loyal wife who had tolerated Savannah’s dazzling presence in her husband’s life, had suffered a mental breakdown after his death and was confined to an insane asylum. Bereft of her lover and benefactor, Savannah had sold all her jewels to support a lifestyle she could no longer afford. All that stood between her and grinding poverty was a cattle herd. Her brother had assured her that, come spring, the cattle could bring forty dollars a head. Even after expenses and wastage, that amounted to close to four hundred thousand dollars, enough for Savannah and Rube to live in luxury back east or in Europe.
That was Savannah St. James’s dream and she’d kill and kill again to make it a reality.
Marmaduke Tweng, who’d been silent, stirred in his chair, then laid his teacup aside. “Mr. St. James, how is the terrain to the west?”
“You mean for the safe passage of the Emperor Maximilian?”
“Indeed, sir,” Tweng said. “That is my concern.”
“Flat, rolling country,” Rube said. “Ideal country for the Emperor.”
“Then, sir, you have set my mind at rest. There is very little that can stop a steam-powered colossus like the Emperor, but—”
“It can’t fly across a canyon,” Savannah said.
Tweng nodded. “That is indeed the case. One day, steam engines will launch us into the sky, but, alas, the time has not yet arrived.”
Tweng was a former London cabbie, a tiny man whose wizened, weather-beaten face resembled a withered yellow apple. He wore a brown felt derby hat adorned with driving goggles and an olive-colored tweed suit with elastic-sided boots. As was his habit, he carried an 1866 Remington derringer in a leather-lined back pocket and a brass compass hung around his neck from a cord chain. He had once driven Queen Vic’s consort Prince Albert around Hyde Park one rainy Saturday afternoon in 1859 and had considered it the highlight of his career . . . until he met Savannah St. James and she asked him to the take the driver’s seat of the mighty land liner Emperor Maximilian.
Savannah sat again and shook the bell that stood on the arm of her chair. A door opened behind her and a slim black woman in a smart maid’s uniform stepped into the room and gave a little curtsy.
“Ah, Leah, there you are,” Savannah said. “Please prepare my bath.” She looked at Marmaduke Tweng. “I presume we have plenty of hot water.”
The little man got to his feet. “I’ll check the valves right now, ma’am. But I can assure you that there’s a plentiful supply.”
“Make it good and hot, Leah. It’s the only way to get rid of this prairie dust.”
Leah bowed. “As you wish, my lady.”
After Tweng and the maid left, Savannah looked at her brother. “Reuben, I want to begin the drive west as soon as possible.”
“No more than a week, perhaps less.”
“This is an affair of the greatest moment. Please instill a sense of urgency in yourself and the rest of our people.”
Rube grinned. “Savannah, this time next year you’ll be summering in London town.”
“I do hope so. I must confess I’m all at sixes and sevens over this whole business.” Savannah rose to her feet, the silk of her afternoon dress clinging to her shapely body like a second skin. “Tell the guns that they must kill without hesitation.”
“They already know that, Savannah.”
“Yes, yes of course they do. You think of everything, Reuben. Why do I doubt you?”
“Relax in your bath and all will be well.” Rube gave a little bow. “Now, if I may be excused?”
“Of course. May I expect you for dinner? Cook assures me that we will have a chicken pie, a quantity of boiled ham served cold with mustard, and a steamed treacle pudding for dessert.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kate Kerrigan stepped out of the darkness and stood in the scarlet glare of Marco Salas’s forge. Showers of sparks cascaded from the foot-long billet of iron he’d thrust into the charcoal. He stared intently at the flames that would change color when the iron began to absorb the carbon that would turn it into steel. The leather bellows huffed and puffed and the fire glowed like a pool of molten lava. Salas saw the flame he wanted, tonged the billet out of the forge, hammered it flat, and then plunged it hissing and steaming into the water. He shoved the iron back into the coals and said, “It will be a knife for Mr. Cobb.”
Kate nodded. “I know. He told me. I’d never seen a blade made before.”
&n
bsp; “It takes time, much heating and hammering, to turn iron into steel, Mrs. Kerrigan. The flames will tell me when the miracle happens.”
Kate smiled. “It’s a miracle, Marco?”
His face lit by fire, the little Mexican said, “Yes it is, and that’s why I pray to holy St. Dunstan, the patron saint of blacksmiths, locksmiths, goldsmiths, and silversmiths, to deliver the miracle on time.” He nodded to the horseshoe that hung above the doorway of the forge. “Do you see that, Mrs. Kerrigan?”
Kate nodded. “A horseshoe is lucky.”
“It is more than that. One time, as St. Dunstan was working at a monastery forge in Glastonbury, the devil came to him disguised as a beautiful young girl and tried to tempt him into sin. But St. Dunstan saw the devil’s cloven hooves under the girl’s dress and nailed a horseshoe to one of them. This caused the devil so much pain that he begged St. Dunstan to remove it. The saint said he would but only on the condition that the devil never again enter a blacksmith’s shop.” Salas stared at the flames. “To this day, as long as a horseshoe hangs above the door, the devil will not come near a forge because he is too afraid.” Salas removed the white-hot billet from the fire.
Kate took a step closer. “May I try the hammer?”
“Of course. I want the metal flatter so I can form the blade.”
He laid the billet on the anvil and gave Kate the hammer. She did what the Mexican had done and pounded the iron as hard as she could.
“No, Mrs. Kerrigan, you don’t need to hit that hard. The hammer blow must be accurate, not powerful. The trick is to hit the metal where you want.” He watched for a while then said, “Ah, now you’re chasing the blade all over the anvil.”
Kate stopped and grinned. “I think you’d better take over, Marco.”
The iron went back into the fire and the blacksmith said, “Your mind must be one with the metal, Mrs. Kerrigan. If a smith has worries and concerns, it is better he turns off the forge, cleans the shop, and goes home. Tomorrow will be another and better day.”
“I hope I didn’t ruin Frank’s knife,” Kate said.
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