by Jake Logan
“They’re very tough.”
“Ah, Señora, we won’t let them have you.”
She nodded at the man, but Slocum saw the fear in her eyes and realized how scared she had become since they awoke. He looked across the silver-lighted brush— somewhere out there was a silent enemy. Be a lot better if she wasn’t here. Then he and Paco could use stealth against them.
“Which way you think they will come in here?”
“They may split—” Paco shrugged. “They may come as four. Boys aren’t always smart.”
Slocum agreed. Herding her low, they headed north. The six-gun was in his fist—his eyes straining in the night for any sign lost in shadows. Paco covered their backs with the rifle.
“When I say get flat, you get on your belly,” he whispered to her.
She nodded and they moved catlike through the mesquite. Then, when they reached a dry wash, he indicated for her to get in it. No sign of the enemy. Soon they were moving westward down the wash—his plan was to cut them off from their own horses.
He saw an outline and stopped her. A buck was sitting up on a high point. Obviously the horse guard, though he had not seen the intruders sneaking up on him.
Paco indicated the seated Indian with the rifle in his hand. Slocum nodded. They needed to take him. It would put the others on alert, but that would reduce the count.
“We also need to gather their horses,” he said in Mary’s ear.
The rifle shot shattered the night. The buck half-rose and fell over, hit hard. Paco ran for his vantage point while Slocum and Mary raced to find the mounts. The horses were spooked by the shot, but not too bad. Slocum cut the rawhide hobbles as she gathered their jaw-bridle reins.
“Bring them,” he said to her, and barreled up the slope to join his partner. On the ground beside Paco, he listened to his own hard breathing and for any telltale sounds. Nothing.
“I’m going to our horses. They’ll head there next if they aren’t at them already. Keep her here.”
Paco nodded. “Be careful, mi amigo.”
“Always—” He took off running low to the left. Five shots in his Army model Colt .44, if he hadn’t lost a cap off one of the nipples and didn’t have a misfire. But the gun had been dry. A bareheaded figure rose and drew back a bow. Slocum took a snap shot and dove to the right. Belly-down on the gravely soil, he dared not stick his head up too high. The Colt armed and ready, he listened to hear if he’d hit his target or not.
Then he heard the soft pad of someone running toward him. Obviously leaping over brush and running pell-mell in his direction, no doubt coming to the aid of the bow shooter. Slocum gathered up and rose, pistol ready and cocked.
The handgun spoke a red-orange flame at the dark figure not forty feet away. The attacker threw a lance that whizzed by Slocum. His second shot staggered the Comanche. The bullet cut off the war cry in his throat. Heart thumping, Slocum surveyed the pearl-lighted brush. Where was number four?
Then he heard Roan grunt, and knew in a second the young buck had mistaken the horse for one broken to ride because he was under a saddle. In the night’s dim light, he watched the youth pile in the saddle and Roan fly into the sky on springs. It was a ride Slocum would not miss taking. The rider looked like a sack of chaff being whipped all over the seat, desperately pulling leather, and in the end was pitched high and far.
Slocum hurried to find him. With his .44 ready, he found the crumpled near-naked body with his head strangely twisted aside—he’d broken his neck in the fall.
“Whew, that roan can buck. Any more?” Paco asked, joining him.
Slocum searched around and, satisfied, saw Mary leading four Indian ponies. “No, he’s the last. The others may not be dead.”
Paco nodded. “Take her to camp. They will be.”
Slocum agreed, holstered his six-gun, and went to help her.
“Are they—” Her eyes were asking him for the truth.
“All dead.”
She closed her lids and dropped her chin. He threw his arm over her and hugged her. “It’s over.”
“No,” she sobbed. “It will never be over for me.”
“Yes, it will. Pain goes away. The memory will be buried behind the good things that happen later.”
He let go of the horses’ leads. They would not go far anyway, and he held her in his arms. She deserved to cry and get it out of her system. Maybe she could go back home and be a housewife—a mother again. But he knew too that society often treated captives as little more than soiled merchandise. But perhaps she could shed that image too—Mary was strong.
6
Paco chose a moon lake for their camp. There were lots of well-broken steers and cows that spooked some at their approach, but running yoked in pairs was not highly successful. Paco roped one of them by the heels. Slocum ran in and unyoked the free one first. The wooden stocks were removed from number two, and the rope released with a flip or two. When freed, some ran off and bucked like a horse with a cougar on its back. Others strolled off matching their mate’s stride like they were still yoked.
Late in the afternoon, they released a pair of four-year-old steers. The two instantly took adversary positions, and Slocum kept his eye on them, quickly remounting Ute. Bellowing with anger, they charged one another and began a ground-churning struggle. Horns clashed and blood flew off the sharp tips. Again and again they rammed each other, neither giving an inch. Between rams, a red flood from one of the combatants’ nostrils was flung along with a stream of snot shaken off its shoulders. The show looked to be a fight that could only end in the death of one of the close-matched opponents.
Paco slapped his leg and laughed at their ferocious battle. “Whew, they worked up a real mad being hitched together. We can come back for that yoke.”
“I ain’t getting between those two hornets. They don’t know they’re steers yet either,” Slocum said, and turned Ute for camp.
“Pretty damn dumb. Hey, toro, you have no huevos. Save your energy.” Paco’s laughter rang out as they rode back to camp.
“I’ll have to say the yoking works. They’re a lot more settled than they would have been simply turned loose after working them.”
“Ah, sí, the colonel knew what he was doing. It was an expensive plan, but there was no other way,” Paco agreed.
“If those cattle bring anything at all and he can get them to Missouri, he may be a rich man.”
They trotted for their camp and some of Mary’s cooking. Dead tired from all the roping on day five, Slocum wondered why the colonel hadn’t come to join them like he’d said. The piles of yokes beside the wagon tracks grew taller. Some cattle they caught only wore broken half-yokes; with others, one member had escaped and the animal left behind had a twisted neck from dragging the yoke to water and graze.
When their tails were bobbed so they could be recognized as the worked ones, Slocum saw many others had joined them that weren’t branded and marked. Cattle being communal animals, they’d joined the tamer ones. Still, the unworked acted more wary, even if they weren’t headed for the brush at the first sight of Slocum and Paco on horseback.
Wearing a blanket skirt and old straw hat and Slocum’s shirt, Mary looked fresh. Bathing in the small lake at night, they were all a shade cleaner and more refreshed. But a day’s work erased most of the previous night’s efforts to clean up. No matter, Slocum was pleased to see her looking so uplifted.
Hands on her hips, she looked up from her cooking and laughed at them when they rode in. “What’s the tally today?”
“We’ve de-yoked a hundred head.” Slocum dropped heavily from the saddle and rested while his sea legs found circulation.
“What did he pay for the yokes?” she asked, using her hand against the glare.
“Some twenty-five centavos.” Paco slapped his stirrup up on the saddle and jerked loose the sweat-soaked latigos. “There are many poor people on the border. They brought them up here by ox carretas that were stacked very high. See, there is no screw an
d ring in them to hook a pull chain. That saved him much money. They are carved from cottonwood and are kind of crude. The neck piece is willow.”
“Willow grows along the Rio Grande?”
Paco nodded. “Oh, the yokes made lots of work for some poor peons.”
“Yes, and they had nothing else to do,” said Slocum. “He paid us a dollar to rope them. Twelve cents a head for a yoke. Mustangs for the taking. The food bill for his hands and new rope. He’ll head for Missouri with eight hundred to a thousand head next spring. May restore him to his old status in life.” Slocum swept his saddle off and a hot breath escaped the saddle and pads. He stood the saddle on the horn for the wool lining to dry.
“You know, amigo, some men need to be rich.”
Slocum nodded and took the hot coffee Mary offered in a tin cup. “To each his own, compadre.”
“Ah, Señora, you spoil me.” Paco took his cup and nodded at her in appreciation. “I will never again be able to eat the bad food Lopez serves.”
“And where will you go when the cattle-catching is over?” she asked.
“Ah, to Mexico. To see my little ones and my wife Camille.”
“What are they doing without you?”
“Tending a few hectares that have water to raise many good things like corn and beans and melons and peppers. Some fine fruit trees. Raising me some fine colts to race and waiting for their papa to come home, I guess.” He dropped to the ground and his spur rowels rang. Seated cross-legged, he swept off his wide sombrero and combed back his dark hair that curled around the edges.
“When will the colonel get here?” she asked.
“I looked for him yesterday,” Paco said, and looked at Slocum for his thoughts.
“Even in an oxcart he should be here by now.”
“Perhaps we should go see about him mañana.”
“You want to go?” Slocum asked her.
“Yes—I want to be with you two.” She brought them both plates heaped with beef and beans.
“That’s the last of the calf we butchered,” she said, handing Paco his supper.
“We’ll get another after we find the colonel,” Slocum said, watching her take a plate for herself. Grateful that her appetite was back, he busied himself eating.
“I may ride ole Roan,” he said between bites.
“Oh, well, we want to see that.” Paco winked his good eye at her.
“Be the day to break him in. Snub him up to your big dun, Paco, and we can get half the edge off him in a few miles.”
Paco nodded as if he hadn’t thought of such a thing. “Time we get to the colonel, he may be a new kitten, huh, Señora?”
“We’ll see.”
Slocum and Paco took turns guarding at night. Neither man was satisfied that more Comanche might not come to avenge the dead ones if they found out what happened to them. So after midnight, Slocum left Mary in the blankets and went to a high point with the Spencer repeater across his lap in the evaporating heat. The night wind’s soft whispers in his ear, he studied the horses for anything that made them curious. Mostly, they grunted in sleep. Still, this was a land where one could in a heartbeat trade his life for death.
Far away, a coyote howled in yapping fashion, another answered, and they were gone on some nocturnal hunt for small deer or rabbit. Not the deep howl of buffalo wolf he’d heard on the plains of Kansas—ole coyote was a lesser predator and stayed back until his larger cousin was ready for him to have the carrion left. Even then, in times of poor hunting, the coyote became a meal for the wolf.
Before the sun came up, Mary joined him, taking a seat on the ground beside him. Her voice smoky with sleep and soft in the silence now that the night insects were at last asleep, she said, “Be careful with Roan today. He’s a stout one.”
He looked off at the eastern rim for the first tint of light. “That’s why I want him broke.”
“I know it is the little boy coming out. You want to be number one.”
“No, he’s mine and I want him broke enough to carry me out of this thorny hot land someday.”
“Where will you go?”
“They say the Bighorn Mountains are pretty.”
“Where are they?”
“West and north of Fort Laramie.”
“You ever been there?”
“No. But I haven’t been many places.”
She glanced over at him. “Why are you in Texas?”
“I thought Texas was recovering—” He dropped his gaze to the rifle in his lap. “It’s as poor as the rest of the South.”
“Will the South ever recover?”
He pulled some dry grass stems and scattered them in the soft wind. “Not in our lifetimes, I fear.”
“Where can we go?”
He glanced over at her. Did she consider herself as his woman? We? Had he promised her anything?
“When this is over, I’ll take you back to Fredricksburg.”
With several nods, she said softly, “I understand.”
He wasn’t sure she did understand. Making roots was still not even possible for him. Had his ploy worked back in Fort Smith? Only time would tell if the federal authorities had closed the books on him. And all his big plans to go home after the smoke cleared from the war and pick up the pieces lay shattered behind him.
“I better make a fire.” She started to get up. “Are we going to find the colonel today?”
“We’ll try. That’s the plan.” He pulled her over and kissed her cheek, then let go.
She smiled at him and went off in the starlight to make them breakfast. On the way, she toed Paco’s form in his bedroll. “Time to get up, hombre.”
“Ah,” he said, sitting up and chuckling softly. “To be woke up by an angel’s foot is so nice.”
Her laughter peeled out. Busy building the fire on her knees, she shook her head in amusement at his words. “My, my, you do make a girl feel good.”
“Oh, you need encouragement in such a place as this. You seen anything?” Paco asked Slocum when he ambled into their camp.
“Nothing. The horses are acting calm. We’ve made it through another night unscathed.”
Paco ran his fingers through his hair as if examining it. “I really like my scalp.”
“So would they.” Slocum grinned and stretched his arms over his head. The sun would be up in a few minutes and start percolating the day’s temperature.
“We better find the colonel or what’s left of him,” Paco said, rolling up his bedding and binding it tight with rawhide strings.
“It’s damn funny he isn’t up here with the crew,” Slocum said, perplexed by the situation.
“Something is wrong,” Paco said, and Slocum agreed.
With that possible turn of events on his mind, Slocum went and caught Roan to ride. It would be a hard day, but he wanted the stout horse ready. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind there was a need and place for the horse in the days ahead. If nothing more, it would be a better way to leave than the way he’d come to this land—aboard Judas, the donkey.
Horses packed, the men seated on the ground, they ate Mary’s breakfast of leftover beef and brown rice with hot coffee. She fire-baked some bread, and both men nodded in approval at the meal when she delivered the hot biscuits.
“Better eat,” Slocum said to her.
“I will. I figure we won’t eat again till dark, so fill up.”
“Ah, you spoil us, Señora. Spoil us bad.”
She laughed and took up her own plate.
After the dishes were washed and stored, they tied down the last pack and she rode Ute to lead the packhorses. Paco snubbed the upset Roan to his saddle horn, and Slocum eased over to his horse to slip into the saddle. When his weight was on Roan’s back, he tried to break loose and pitch, but there was no way the horse could get enough slack to do more than shake his head. Rollers went out his flared nostrils in protest. His screams and grunts rolled across the greasewood. But all he could do was try to back away and shake his head in frustrat
ed fury.
For his stubbornness, he was flailed on the butt with Slocum’s braided rope reins. Slocum could also jerk on the bosal and punish him. In a short while Roan matched Paco’s dun’s trot—not willingly, but forced to obey or be dragged. In mid-morning, Paco handed Slocum the lead and they rode on. Roan began to engage in some head-tossing as if to test his confinement, and then, as if satisfied to be free, kept up the pace with the others. His shoulder dark with the sweat drawn out by his own nervousness, he breathed free and not hard. No telling how tough he really could be. When Slocum turned and winked at Mary, she nodded in approval, bringing on the pack animals.
At noontime, they took a break at a small mud hole and watered the horses. That gave her a chance to slip off into the brush and relieve herself. Slocum drank some hot canteen water—better than the shallow stuff the horses sucked up where they could find enough to do it. Many got on one knee to drink from the meager supply. Desert-raised animals know more tricks than those brought up in towns. Slocum caught the leads and helped Mary into the saddle. Then he turned and looked at the hip-shot Roan. He’d see about him.
Cheeking the bosal headstall up to his left leg to contain the big horse, he mounted and Roan circled impatiently underneath him. Fretting, Roan danced on eggs the first hundred yards, with Slocum ready to saw his nose off. The bosal could shut his air off if pulled hard enough. Paco shouted something, but Roan was headed south in a long trot and Slocum smiled to himself.
It was the dark streak in the sky that began to concern Slocum by mid-afternoon. A black trace of smoke from a hot fire marked the sky, not some campfire, but the sort that came from lots of things burning. Slocum tossed his head in that direction.
“I see it too,” Paco said with a grim look pasted on his swarthy face.
“What is it?” Mary asked in a small voice, searching their faces as she booted Ute in closer.
“No telling,” Slocum said. “One of us ought to ride ahead and see what we can learn.”
Paco nodded. “I can go see.”
“Be careful. Sometimes they lay traps like that to get the curious.”
Paco indicated he’d heard him and set spurs to the dun.