“Twelve miles,” Mathew said. “Early start tomorrow. Camp them at Dunson’s Corner. I’ll meet you there tonight.”
The old foreman answered with a nod, and Mathew loped the bay well to the left of the approaching herd. The last thing he wanted to do was scare the longhorns into running when they hadn’t gone a mile.
* * *
Turkey buzzards still glided across the blue skies, reminding Mathew of how many cattle still rotted on this country. But sight of the ranch lifted his spirits. He felt it would take him a week just to scrub his body clean of dirt, and he hadn’t been riding long. As he trotted the bay into the main yard, another sight made him smile.
“You’re not stepping inside this house, Mathew Garth,” Tess told him. “Not till you bathe like . . . forever.”
He slid from the lathered bay and handed the reins to Miguel Martinez, telling the vaquero, “Saddle up the dun for me, Miguel. Cool this one off before she gets any water.”
“Sí, patrón.”
Sweeping off his hat, he wiped the sweat and dirt from his forehead. His hair was already plastered. It had to be eighty degrees already, and the sun showed a long way from noon.
“You have everything you need?” he asked.
“Nothing has changed since the last time you asked me that, Mathew.” Tess gave him a radiant smile. “Which was three hours ago.”
Still, she stepped off the porch and came into his arms, not caring how dirty he was, or that she had just bathed, and kissed him hard. He pulled her closer. Finally, they released, and she stepped back.
“I don’t like good-byes,” she said, “but I like this.”
“Me, too.” He nodded at the bunkhouse.
“Juan Quinta knows what to do,” he said, and Tess gave him a bemused look. “He’s been doing this since Dunson bossed this spread. He can handle anything that comes up.” He grinned at her. “So can you. I figure we’re in good hands.”
She bowed in jest. “Thank you, kind sir.”
He pointed west. “John Bellamy is half a day’s ride away. I told him I’d pay him seven dollars a head for any of his cattle that I accidentally slapped a road brand on. He’s a good man. Can help out, too.”
Tess’s green eyes darkened, and her eyebrows lowered.
“By God,” she said. “You’re worried.”
Matt’s head bobbed. “That I am.”
“Three thousand head of cattle. What’s that you read to me in that five-penny dreadful you found years ago? ‘A trail drive is nothing but two thousand ways to die.’ You’re the one who should be worried.”
Mathew remembered that yellow-backed half-dime novel. Two thousand ways to die? No, there were countless more than that. Each steer had four hoofs, and either one of those could kill a man. So could its horn. Three thousand times five? What was that? It didn’t matter, and that was just the start.
Forget Indians. They might steal a few head, charge a toll, maybe even stampede a herd, but since that first drive with Thomas Dunson all those years ago, Mathew had never lost a man, or even had one injured, because of Indians.
But he had buried many, or heard, seen, or read about other casualties on the cattle drives.
Yeah, bushwhackers and trail thieves had killed some. And drunken brawls and/or bad whiskey in trail towns had caused a few other deaths. But the trail drive itself had its own dangers.
Half-broke horses? Mathew had read the Lord’s word over hired hands kicked to death, crushed to death when a horse rolled, or bucked off to have their brains bashed in or their necks broken. Lightning. Bad water holes. Or no water holes. Snakebite. You could drown crossing a river. How many cowhands had Mathew buried on some bank? The sun could kill you. Or you might even freeze to death.
He recalled Frank McCoy, twenty-one years old, with a carrot-top head and peach fuzz mustache. A hailstone had killed him back in ’73 . . . on the last night before they had arrived in Ellsworth. Those stones, some the size of a big man’s balled-up fist, had also killed sixteen horses and a dozen longhorns.
“I am worried,” he told her, “about that, too.”
She read his mind. “But . . .” She smiled again. “Those rustlers. The ones who stole the steers that you tracked down. The men that No Sabe rode with.” Her head shook. “It has been a long time since Don Diego’s men or Cortina’s boys troubled us from across the border. I think that was just a little fluke.”
“I don’t,” Mathew said.
Tess grew serious.
“And I’m not thinking about south of the border.”
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, kissed him hard, and, reluctantly, pulled back. “I have Janeen and Juan and other good men. John Bellamy. Even a few good men in Dunson City. This ranch will take care of itself, Mathew. You take care of yourself.”
He pulled on his hat. Miguel Martinez was bringing the dun around.
“Do what you think’s best,” he told her after he climbed into the saddle. “You’re usually right.”
“That I am,” she said, and they both laughed. Although her laughter died in her throat, and the tears formed in her eyes, as she watched her husband ride through the gate.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
He felt pretty good, not what anyone would consider relaxed, but the tightness in his chest and the straining of his shoulders had lessened. Mathew kept the dun at a trot, one that many riders would consider backbreaking, but he always felt good bouncing in the saddle. And plenty of horsemen considered the trot the easiest for a horse. He covered the ground quickly, crossed the creek, and in good time picked up the trail of cattle—his cattle, and those of neighbors, and strays that had drifted in the winter storms and somehow survived. He, like Thomas Dunson twenty years earlier, had turned a blind eye to the brands those cattle wore, and had slapped his road brand on them all.
He followed the trail north.
A trail marked by Texas longhorns. Three thousand strong. Churning up the ground like some sodbuster’s plow. What was it Groot had said?
“Followin’ three thousand stupid cows ain’t the hardest thing in the world to do.”
Certainly not here. It was something to marvel. Maybe a mile wide, although once the herd strung out, that would decrease substantially until it averaged two hundred yards across, sometimes four hundred. As Mathew trotted along, he couldn’t see that the trail was narrowing, but he had been in the business long enough to know that it would.
This, of course, was not the Great Texas Cattle, which was now becoming commonly referred to as the Chisholm Trail, although the Indian trader had never carved any trail in Texas—just in Indian Territory and Kansas—and, as far as Mathew knew, had never even owned a longhorn steer. Nor was it the Western Trail, the relatively new route that took cattle into Dodge City and points northward like Ogallala, Nebraska.
Ranches spread all across Texas, so “feeder” trails could be found across southwestern Texas to the country above Houston or even as far east as Nacogdoches. Eventually, though, those trails would converge with the main trail. If you could call it a main trail. Mathew remembered heading up the trail in the 1870s. Cattle, even wiry longhorns, needed grass to eat, so the trail could shift, or widen, depending on the weather. Droughts and floods might shift the trail west or east. Yet by late spring, after a few herds had started north, and easily by summer, the trail was unmistakable.
Hooves and wagon tracks would beat the grass to fine dirt, a chalky or deep brown or red strip surrounded by a sea of grass. Wind and rain would strip away some of that dirt until the trail was something of a valley, marked by the banks of sand left there by the wind, and by white-bleached bones of the animals that had died on the trail. Men, at least, were buried. Usually.
Twelve miles to Dunson’s Corner, just a speck on a map with some shade and good water. That was supposed to be their first camp, a long, hard, dusty drive, but manageable, especially seeing how early they had gotten the longhorns moving. Which is why when Mathew reached El Huerto de
l Borracho, he reined in sharply and cursed. Raking his spurs across the dun’s belly, he raced down the ridge.
He could see the herd, a mass of various colors grazing on the open prairie. El Huerto del Borracho was properly named. The Orchard of the Drunkard. Not a damned tree within ten miles of here. Four or more riders appeared to be circling the herd, but Mathew could tell by the tracks that there had been no stampede. He glanced at the sky. Two o’clock maybe. The dun raised dust as Mathew galloped toward the camp. A fire. He saw Groot, apron on, hovering over a coffeepot. Too late for their noon break. The men would have changed horses from the remuda by now, and Groot, Blasingame, and Joey Corinth would be well on their way toward Dunson’s Corner—eight miles north of here.
Instead, the way Mathew read things, they were pitching camp . . . here . . . at El Huerto del Borracho.
The dun slid, and Mathew leaped from the saddle before his horse had even stopped completely. He let go of the reins and stormed toward the coffeepot, where the cowboys had gathered. Groot straightened. Laredo, frowning, started toward Mathew, but stopped.
When he got riled, Mathew’s face had stopped many a man.
“Four miles!” Mathew whipped off his hat and tossed it at his feet. “Four damned miles. I told you to make for—”
He stopped. He saw the hoodlum wagon off twenty or thirty yards north. And he saw a sight he had seen too many times on a cattle drive. A bedroll covering what appeared to be a man.
“Blasingame?” Mathew asked, his voice tight, all anger in his body released.
Tom picked up the hat, slapped the dust off on his chaps, and offered it to his father, and Laredo Downs nodded.
“Was lightin’ out after the noon break,” Laredo said. “Axles broke. Both of ’em.”
Mathew stared harder at the hoodlum wagon. He could see the axles now, digging into the dirt. Both axles. He wet his lips. Lightning brought him a cup of black coffee. Mathew took the hat, pulled it on his sweaty head, and accepted the cup, blistering hot even through the leather fingers of Mathew’s gloves. Joey Corinth gathered the reins to Mathew’s dun and led it to the remuda.
“A freak thing,” Joe Nambel said.
“Freak my arse,” Groot snapped, and sent a river of tobacco juice sizzling in the fire’s coals.
As they walked to the hoodlum wagon, Groot—the only one who had actually witnessed the accident—explained what he had seen. The last of the boys had filled their bellies with coffee and biscuits, saddled fresh horses, and ridden back to the herd. Corinth and Blasingame had helped Groot break camp, and then the kid was back leading the remuda out, the mules were hitched to both chuck wagon and hoodlum wagon, and both men set out north.
“I seen it. Back axle just broke off clean in two. That stopped the wagon, and then the front axle musta broke. Wagon lurched over to one side, comin’ down the hill and all, mules brayin’, and Milt, he lets loose with a curse and a scream, and pitches over the side.” He let out with a string of blasphemy.
“Wagon turned over,” Laredo said. “We righted it once Teeler, Joe, and me seen it happen. But it had rolled right atop that ol’ boy. Neck broke. Skull caved in.”
Joe Nambel’s voice was scarcely a whisper. “Probably never felt a thing.”
“Which is a blessin’, I reckon,” Laredo said.
They were at the wagon. What supplies and gear had spilled out in the wreck had been haphazardly tossed into the rear of the wagon. Mathew found a whip that must have been overlooked. He picked it up, coiled it, and set it in the driver’s box.
“Mules were all right,” Laredo said. “Traces broke. We got ’em in the remuda now. But this wagon ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Mathew could see that for himself. When the wagon overturned, two wheels had been busted, and the side panel splintered. He remembered something else that marked the great cattle trails: the broken-down wagons, some stripped for firewood, or left to rot, the wheels and axles usually taken for spare parts.
Not the axles on Milt Blasingame’s Studebaker, though.
“Look at that, Mathew.” Groot had dropped to his knees and pointed a crooked finger at the front axle. The finger moved to the rear axle.
“I’ve had axles break on me afore,” Groot said. He lifted his right hand toward Joe Nambel, the closest one to him, who took the hint and helped pull the old-timer to his feet, knees popping as Groot rose. “Never two at one time, though. And never broke like that.”
“Groot’s right,” Laredo said. “Looks like both were sawed.”
Mathew could only nod.
“Not all the way through, of course,” said Teeler Lacey, who had just ridden up. “Just enough so the wear and tear would break one of ’em after a spell. Only it broke both. Same time. Fluke thing.”
“My arse,” Groot repeated. “I don’t think murder’s ever no fluke thing, Teeler.”
“Listen, you ol’ biscuit-roller, I didn’t—”
Mathew silenced Lacey with a wave of his hand. Groot, who had started to meet Teeler Lacey’s challenge, worked instead on his tobacco, and spit on a beetle, which raised its hindquarters, then scurried off into drier country.
“Didn’t lose much in the way of supplies,” Laredo said. “Some sacks ripped. Think we salvaged most of it, though. But this wagon.” He patted the remnants of one of the wheels.
“Did Milt have any kin?” Mathew asked.
The cowboys gathered stared at one another, then at their dusty boots.
“Never mentioned nothin’, no one,” Groot said after a pause.
“Joey . . . that wrangler . . . he might know,” Tom suggested.
Mathew nodded. “Ride out to the remuda, Tom. Ask him. Then I want you to . . . no. Is Yago with the herd?”
“Yeah,” Laredo answered.
Mathew told his son: “Spell Yago for me. Send him in.”
Yago Noguerra was one of the best riders in the crew. He could ride to the ranch and back and not wear out the horse carrying him both ways.
“All right, Pa.” He was hurrying to the picket line of horses.
“Lightning,” Mathew said, “get me Milt’s bedroll and war bag. I’ll see if there’s anything about next of kin there.”
“That’s Milt’s soogan over him, Mathew,” Laredo said. “There wasn’t nothin’ wrapped up inside. Not even long johns, slicker, or an extry shirt.”
“What are we gonna do ’bout the wagon, boss?” Teeler Lacey asked. “Not meanin’ to be disrespectful or nothin’. But . . .”
“That’s why I need Yago,” Mathew said as he walked to the wagon’s tailgate. Lightning was already in the back, sorting through the rolls of soogans and the mostly flour sacks that had been converted into war bags, which cowboys would generally carry from one job to the next, filled with smaller items and sundries that they needed. Razors, socks, spare shirt, soap—as if a cowboy ever needed that—maybe even a toothbrush or tobacco twists or plugs. And keepsakes.
“Do we need an extry wagon?” Lacey asked.
Mathew turned toward Groot for a reply.
“You recollect how things went with Dunson on that drive all ’em years ago? You tell me.”
Mathew looked back at Teeler Lacey with an expression that said, Anything else?
Lacey had been on that drive. He remembered. Watered-down coffee, or grain burned in a skillet and then used as coffee grounds. Ten sacks of flour. Lacey had commented that he had been fed better at that Yankee camp in Rock Island, on the Illinois-Iowa border, during the six months he had been imprisoned there in the war.
“All right,” Lacey conceded, “I reckon a hoodlum wagon’s a good idea.”
* * *
“Honorably discharged, but with regret, at Fort Clark,” Mathew said. He squatted by the fire, his back against the front wheel of the chuck wagon, as he went through the personal items of Milt Blasingame. “Tenth of August, 1879.” With reverence, Mathew folded the paper and slipped it into the sack.
“Where’s Fort Clark?” Lightning asked.
“Brackettville,” Mathew answered, and gave a wave toward the east.
“Anything else?” Laredo asked.
Mathew’s head shook. No letters, no tintypes, no lockets. Just two packs of Starr Navy chewing tobacco, shaving needs, a pair of woolen socks, and one scalp. Mathew had not touched the scalp. He tightened the drawstring on the war bag and set it beside the wagon wheel.
“Yago,” he told the vaquero as he rose. “I want you to ride back to la patróna. You understand.”
“Sí.”
“Tell her and Juan Quinta what happened. Tell them that Milt is dead, that the hoodlum wagon we have is worthless. We need a new wagon. The Abingdon will have to do.” Abingdon, Illinois, made might good wagons. Besides, the one Mathew referred to back at the ranch came with tubular steel axles. Let some sneaking, yellow-backed son of a bitch try to saw into those. “Have Miguel Martinez drive the wagon. That means he’s coming with us, all the way to Dodge City. And I need the two of you back here sometime tonight. We move out at first light.”
“Sí.” That was another thing Mathew liked about Yago Noguerra. The vaquero wasted no time. He was already hurrying to his blood bay gelding.
As soon as the dust had cleared, Mathew looked at Tom and Lightning, who were digging the grave beside Blasingame’s body.
“Fetch me the book,” he said. “I’ll read over Milt.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
A boy, thirteen years old, stands on this burned-over patch of land called Texas. From where he is, the Rio Grande flows, a dust devil twists and turns in the sand only to die almost as quickly as it has materialized. And a rider, wearing a fine jacket and a big sombrero, trots his horse up from the riverbank to the camp the boy shares with a hard man.
The rider is Mexican. The hard man is white, an Englishman. The boy is Mathew Garth. For weeks, he has been traveling south and west with the hard man, leaving behind those horrible memories of his mother, his father, the wagon train, the Indians. Now, almost all he remembers is this hard man, Thomas Dunson.
The boy cannot quite understand the words between the Mexican and the Englishman. Civil, even polite, the words, but the tone is unambiguous, foreboding. Without taking his eyes off the Mexican, Dunson waves his right hand, urging the boy, Mathew Garth, to move away.
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