“That’s serious money,” Logan said. “If Throckmorton pays us right away.”
“He will,” Concho said, “and when he goes to sell them, we’ll do the drive and make even more money.”
“I’d rather drive ’em than steal ’em,” Lem said.
“Well, we’ll do both. Soon as Paddy gets that herd into Kansas, we’ll take the cattle off his hands.”
“What about Kramer?” Logan asked. “Ain’t he comin’ up behind Paddy with the rest of the herd?”
“Far as we know, he is,” Concho said. “We’ll probably run into him on the way back. He won’t know what to think when he sees two herds comin’ to meet him.”
“By the time Kramer figgers it all out,” Lem said, “we’ll have his herd mixed in with ours and he’ll be wolf meat.”
“That’s the way I look at it,” Concho said.
The four men caught up with the rest of the band, and the others all looked to Concho for more revelations of his plans. They were envious of Lyle and Logan and wished they’d had more to do with the killings.
“You’ll all get your chance,” Concho said. “We’ll let Paddy get the herd up across the Kansas line and then take him down, steal all the cattle.”
“We still goin’ to thin his crew down before that?” Mitch asked.
“When he gets the herd up to the Verdigris, we’ll shoot at least one more man.”
“Then I claim it’s my turn,” Mitch said.
“How do you figger that?” Skip asked.
“I just claim it, Skip.”
The two men glared at each other.
Skip, enraged, swung a fist at Mitch. Part of his knuckle grazed Mitch’s chin.
Mitch got enough of a sting from the blow that he leaped toward Skip, his arms outstretched. He grabbed Skip by the arm and jerked him so that Skip lost his seating in the saddle. He toppled toward Mitch, who dragged him to the ground as he fell from his perch.
The two started swinging fists at each other as the other riders halted and circled the two pugilists.
“Bastard,” yelled Skip.
Mitch cracked him across the chin with his fist and Skip sagged backward into his horse. His horse sidled away and Mitch charged at Skip in an attempt to tackle him and throw him to the ground.
Skip sidestepped Mitch’s charge and brought a hammering blow down on Mitch’s neck. Mitch fell to the ground as if poleaxed. Then he rolled away and regained his footing.
Skip, panting hard, swung a roundhouse left at Mitch. His fist struck Mitch in his right ear.
Mitch roared in pain and grappled with Skip.
“Cut it out, you pecker heads,” Concho yelled at the two men.
They ignored him and kept swinging at each other.
And missing.
The riders flexed in and out of their spectator circle as the two men scrambled to tear each other’s heads off or gouge their eyes out. Some of the men were laughing.
“Damn it,” Lem yelled, “stop it, you two, or I’ll take the quirt to you both.”
Mitch was breathing hard by then, and there were scratch marks on his face. Each mark trickled droplets of blood down his cheeks. Skip’s left eye had started to turn purple underneath the lower lid.
The two men wrapped arms around each other and butted heads. They fell to the ground and rolled over and over, punching and gouging each other with fists and fingers, drawing blood, bruising flesh. They yelled and hurled epithets at each other while the men on horseback looked down and cheered them both on, first one, then the other.
“Grab his nuts, Skip,” one man yelled.
“Kick him in the eggs,” hollered another.
The two got up again and staggered as they circled each other like two punch-drunk pugilists.
“All right,” Concho boomed, “you both got blood in your eyes. Enough. Save your fight for another time.”
“Yeah,” Lem said. “Save it for the cowhands.”
Skip and Mitch, both out of breath, and bleeding from dozens of scratches, stood there like two worn-out boxers, their arms hanging down at their sides, a pair of bedraggled roosters with most of the fight gone out of them.
“Shake hands,” Concho ordered. “Mitch gets the next kill, Skip. You can have the one after that.”
“Fine with me,” Skip panted. He let his head drop and grabbed his legs above both knees to steady himself.
Mitch patted him on the back and when Skip stood up, he offered his hand. The two men shook hands.
“Mount up,” Concho said. “We’ll crack another jug of whiskey at sundown.”
“Hooray,” shouted some of the others on horseback.
Skip and Mitch crawled, wounded, into their saddles and slumped over as they recovered their breaths.
Later, Concho sent Will Davis off to the east to track the herd.
“Come back after Paddy beds ’em down for the night,” he told Will.
“I don’t get a shot?”
“You’d better not. I want ol’ Paddy to have enough hands to get that herd up into Kansas.”
“I never get to have no fun,” Will said as he took the glass from Concho.
“Play with yourself, Will. That’ll be the most fun you have this day.”
Will laughed and rode off toward the east.
Concho caught up with the others, but he had his eye on the western sky and the huge thunderheads to the northwest. They billowed out like the huge sails of sailing ships and drifted across the blue ocean of the sky in their direction.
“When those clouds turn black on their underbellies,” Concho told the others, “we’re in for a real gully washer. We better start lookin’ for high ground.”
The men all looked at the sky and nodded.
They rode north in sunshine, but they all knew that by dusk they’d be in shadow and it would be time to break out the slickers and the jackets. In the distance, they saw both broken land and patches of farmland, an occasional farmhouse, and a barn or two. They saw milk cows and horses, mules, and goats. All far away, all beyond their caring or their understanding.
They knew who they were and why they were riding their horses.
They were not sodbusters, by golly. Not by a long shot.
They were free men, not bound by the land or the law.
Chapter 33
It was well before noon when Joe Eagle spotted the lone grave on the prairie. He and Dane rode over to it.
“That’s got to be Tolliver under there,” Dane said.
“See coyote tracks,” Joe said, pointing to the hieroglyphs around the dirt mound.
“I see ’em, Joe.”
They had walked, trotted, and galloped their horses to gain time and distance. Dane knew that a man could walk four miles in an hour and he wanted to cover at least thirty miles by sundown. The horses had never been taxed, and were in fine fettle by the time they came up on Tolliver’s grave site.
“Let’s go on, Joe. We know what happened here. You don’t have to do any tracking to find out more.”
“Find herd?” Joe asked.
“By tomorrow, I hope.”
“We go, then,” Joe said, and the two rode on into the afternoon, following the wide swath of tracks left by two thousand head of cattle and several outriders. There were piles of dung littering the plain in the wake of the herd’s passage, and the strong smell of urine drifted up from the ground and stung their nostrils.
Beyond the bedding ground, at the deep fork of the Canadian River, Joe spotted the stone cairn and the two men crossed there. Joe began to read sign and saw where Paddy had let the cattle drink on the other side and then got them moving again.
Dane kept the same pace as he had that morning and they ate up ground. The land was changing. There were farmlands, but there were also open stretches of prairie that were broken up by gullies and ravines. It looked as if the back of the land had been flayed by a giant wielding a cat-o’-nine tails whip and gouged out great wounds on the plain.
It was near dusk
when they came to a place where Paddy had spent the next night. Joe saw where the herd had been bedded down, where the nighthawks had ridden on their rounds.
“There,” Joe said as he pointed off to the right of the bedding ground. “Another grave.”
The two rode over and Joe began to decipher the myriad layers of tracks surrounding the grave. He rode over to a place some yards away and beckoned for Dane to join him. He pointed to the ground when Dane rode up alongside him.
“Man wait here. Shoot rider like buffalo.”
Dane saw the forked stick that had been shoved down and broken where it was stuck into the ground.
Joe rode in a straight line past the stick, peering at the ground. Dane followed him.
“Walk here,” Joe said, and then turned his horse to follow the boot prints.
“He’s on foot,” Dane said.
“Him on foot. Go to horse. We find place.”
Joe found the ravine where the bushwhacker had left his horse while he carried out his murderous deed. Joe examined all the tracks and saw where the rider had come in and where he had gone out. They rode back to the bedding ground, past the grave of an unknown cowhand.
Joe sniffed the air and then his gaze settled on the head of the slain cow. They rode over to where the entrails, head, and other organs lay strung out and ravaged by buzzards and coyotes. They could hear the zizzing of the blowflies several yards from where the cow had been butchered.
“They kill cow,” Joe said. “Cook butcher.”
Dane nodded.
Then Joe swept the western horizon with his eyes and spotted the rotting hickory stump. Beyond, he saw a fresh mound of dirt.
“Come,” he said to Dane. “Joe read tracks.”
Joe rode to the stump and examined it.
“Him lie down here,” he said. He looked beyond, toward the fresh grave. “Him run. We see.”
Joe dismounted and walked over the ground. He pointed to a patch of grass that was stained with dried blood. “Him shot here. Him buried there.”
“What was he shooting at?” Dane asked, not expecting an answer. It was more of a rhetorical question to himself.
Joe turned around and lifted his arm. He sighted down it and saw the strung-out detritus of the butchered cow. “Him shoot cow. Maybe him shoot lead cow.”
“There’s sure a direct line from this stump to where Alicante butchered that cow.”
“Grave small. Not deep. Not man buried here. Young boy.”
“You think so?” Dane said.
“Small man. Boy.”
“But who—”
Dane stopped talking in midsentence. Suddenly he knew. He knew who was buried there in that small grave. It could only be one person.
“Randy Bowman,” he said softly.
Joe nodded.
He walked farther on, following tracks that Dane could not see. He was too stunned to make sense of anything at that moment.
“Him walk here. Him run. Cowhand shot him. Him die here.”
“He wasn’t supposed to get away, was he?” Dane said to Joe.
“No place to hide,” Joe said.
“Concho sent that boy into certain death.”
“Maybe,” Joe said. “No can hide. No can run far.”
“Concho wanted him to die. But first he wanted him to shoot that cow. That’s the only explanation I can come up with, Joe.”
“You explain good. Make sense. Boy shoot cow. Somebody shoot boy.”
“I’d like to choke the life out of that bastard Concho,” Dane said.
“Maybe you get chance, Dane.”
There was a faint smile on Joe’s lips, but Dane did not feel like smiling himself. Randy was a thief and a coward, a sneak who had spied on him. But he didn’t hate him. Not now. He was just a young boy who had gotten in a rough game and now he was dead. What galled him was that Concho had sent him to this place knowing Randy would be killed. As Joe had said, there was no place to run, no place for him to hide.
“Let’s get out of here, Joe,” Dane said.
“Sun set soon. Make camp,” Joe said.
“Yeah. We’ll catch up to Paddy tomorrow. I just hope we don’t find any more graves.”
They camped by the little creek that ran on the eastern side of the bedding grounds, but a mile or two farther on.
They spread out their bedrolls under some cottonwoods and willows, filled their canteens. They hobbled their horses on new grass and did not build a fire. They ate sandwiches and watched the night spread its dark blanket over the sky and sprinkle it with sparkling diamonds. It was a peaceful evening, but in the distance they heard the ominous rumble of thunder and saw streaks of lightning scrawl electric latticework in the dark thunderheads.
“Much rain come,” Joe said as he crawled inside his bedroll.
Dane plucked tobacco from his pouch and chewed it as he watched lightning strike the ground in the distance, followed each time by the bellowing of loud thunder.
Finally he spat out the last of his chew and slipped into his bedroll. The horses whickered and the thunder rumbled.
He fell asleep just before the winds swept across the plains and whipped up the creek, ripped leaves from the trees, and brought the first soft patter of rain.
Chapter 34
The rain blasted across the plain in silver sheets, lashing the cattle and the nighthawks with stinging needles propelled by the winds that circled and gusted with a chilling fury.
Steve and Bill helped Alfredo lash down the chuck wagon, tying strong ropes to the back wheels and stringing them to the supply wagon.
“This is a frog strangler,” Steve yelled above the thunder and surging wind.
The chuck wagon rocked as its canvas top was buffeted by the savage gusts.
Alicante, soaked to the skin, shivered and tied knots in the long rope. The supply wagon too swayed under the onslaught of wind and rain as its covering tarp rippled and rattled as if it harbored a box full of writhing snakes. The men bent to the wind as they tautened the ropes. Horses neighed as they clustered together, their rumps turned to the northwest as buffers. The cattle groaned and mooed, pressed against one another for warmth and protection.
Paddy came by and tested the ropes.
“It’s a howler,” he shouted, and the wind snatched away his words while he clamped his hands down on his hat to keep it from sailing into the darkness.
“How come you’re ropin’ the two wagons together, Bill?” Paddy asked.
“Case either wagon gets blowed off its brake, I figger the other’n will act like an anchor.”
“Any of you seen Chub Toomey?” Paddy’s voice was loud, but it was torn to shreds by the wind and the rain.
“Seen him a while ago with Dewey,” Steve said. “Some cattle broke away from the middle of the herd and he’s tryin’ to round ’em up or drive ’em back where they belong.”
“Yeah, him and Dewey were flappin’ their hats and hollerin’ at a bunch of steers makin’ tracks for high ground.”
“There ain’t no high ground,” Paddy yelled as he turned his back to the wind.
Wu finished hobbling the two horses that were still hitched to the chuck wagon, then ran his hands along the harness clear to the brake. The pots and pans inside the wagon rattled and clanged like some mad symphony that was off-key and off-tempo. The cook fire was out and the fire ring was filling with water. Burned and charred chunks of firewood began to float and churn and there was a thick soup of ashes that danced under the peppering downpour of rain.
“I go inside,” Wu said as he struggled against the wind alongside the wagon. “Too much rain. Too much wind.”
Paddy shooed him toward the back of the wagon.
“Go on, Wu Ling,” he yelled.
Wu nodded and made his way to the rear of the wagon.
“Horses okay, Alfredo?” Paddy asked the wrangler.
“Wet and cold,” Alicante said. “All hobbled and shivering like the rest of us.”
“Bill, you and Ste
ve come with me,” Paddy said. “If we’ve got strays, Chub and Dewey might need help.”
“Sure thing, Paddy,” Steve said. “Do we ride or walk?”
“Walk for now. But bring your horses.”
The two men walked to the other side of the supply wagon and untied their reins from the rear wheel. They led their horses around the wagon and followed Paddy, who looked like a downhill skier as he braced the wind and plodded forward toward the middle of the herd.
His horse was tied to a short tree stump with jagged edges around the cut top. He unwound the reins and the three men continued on their way. Rain stung their eyes. They bent their heads and held their hats down.
“My makin’s are all wet,” Bill said, but neither Paddy nor Steve heard him. The wind blotted out all normal conversation, and the din from the chuck wagon mingled with the thunder to muffle any but the strongest voice. Lightning stabbed the ground a few miles away and stitched the elephantine clouds with jagged forks of mercurial light that flashed and vanished as peals of thunder rolled across the skies.
Paddy came to a place where the herd was hemorrhaging cattle. He heard Chub and Dewey shouting at each other but could not see them.
He turned to Bill and Steve. “Mount up,” he said. “We’ve got big trouble.”
Paddy hauled himself into his saddle and fought through the rain to find Chub and Dewey. He followed the stream of cattle that had left the herd. They weren’t running, but they were walking fast, following some new leader that evidently had struck out on its own.
At the next flash of lightning, Paddy looked down at the ground. What he saw in that brief flash was very disturbing. Water ran in rivulets in several directions. Fast water. Water that swept along clods of mud that disintegrated and formed small banks. Another flash of lightning showed him that the cattle were splashing through ankle-high water. They seemed to be unsteady on their feet. Their heads hung low and raindrops bounced off their horns and shoulders, splattered from their rumps. The wind blew hard and gusted even harder.
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