The wind moaned through the canvas tarp covering the chuck wagon. Still, she smelled nothing like rain. She had seen no clouds before the sun set, except far north toward the river, but the night seemed darker than usual. Yet when she brushed her hair, she felt a static shock. Despite the wind, the night felt crushing, heavy with electricity. Then she saw the flash, way off in the distance. She waited to hear the rumble of thunder, but no noise came. Another flash, but to the south, away from the black clouds along the Red River. And yet still . . . no thunder.
Groot saw it, too.
“That’s a bad omen,” he said.
Which caused Joe Nambel to mutter a blasphemy. “Ever’thing’s a bad omen for you, Groot.”
“Go to hell, Joe Nambel.”
“All it is, you damned ol’ belly-cheater, is heat lightnin’.”
Groot opened his mouth and clenched his fists, but before he spoke, or charged Joe Nambel like a raging bull, Mathew Garth rode into camp.
Tess could feel everything change. Her feelings. The mood in camp. Even the air seemed filled with more of that electrical charge, while silent lightning shot across the sky to the south.
“Lightning, Joe,” Mathew said as he handed the reins to his lathered horse to Joey Corinth. “Saddle up. I want you two with the herd.”
“It ain’t my time,” Lightning said.
Mathew turned and stared. He did not speak. He didn’t have to. Slowly, muttering under his breath, Lightning pulled his hat down tighter and began to unbuckle his gun belt.
“You might want to keep that iron,” Mathew said.
Lightning whirled. “After what you preached to me last time? With it lightning like it is?” He started to point south, but spotted something and swung his arm to the north. “There. Seen another flash. It’s ahead of us and behind us. You want me to get melted, Pa?”
“You might have need of that six-shooter, son, tonight. Get mounted. Both of you.” While they were leaving, he called out to the others, “Sleep with boots on, boys. And your horses close. Joey!”
He strode across the camp toward the remuda.
When he returned a few minutes later, most of the cowhands were heading toward the remuda themselves. Alvaro Cuevas, Bradley Rush, and even Tom Garth drew revolvers from their holsters, opened the loading gates, rotated the cylinders, fished out shells from their cartridge belts, and filled the last chambers—usually kept empty for safety purposes.
Tess withdrew the bandanna—Mathew’s bandanna—and held the plate out for her husband. Mathew, however, shook his head and grabbed the cup of coffee.
“Fast breakfast tomorrow, Groot,” he said. “Coffee. Biscuits. Fix them some sandwiches—slap some bacon in a biscuit—and tell the boys to stick a couple in their saddlebags or war bags. That’ll be their noon dinner.”
“They’ll need to swap their horses,” Groot said.
“They will. While we’re riding.”
“You ain’t gonna make Spanish Fort tomorrow.”
“No.” Mathew gulped down coffee. “But we’ll put some distance between our herd and A. C. Thompson.”
The cup, still half-full, fell into the wreck pan. Mathew glanced at Tess and started past her. Suddenly, he stopped.
Tess heard it, too. Distant rumbling. To the south. Thunder? she thought. Groot straightened and looked back, too.
“God . . . have mercy.” The words came, just loud enough for Tess to hear, from Mathew.
Her right hand covered her mouth. Stampede, she thought, but . . . her head shook.
No . . . their cattle were camped north of camp. It couldn’t be . . .
A voice sang out in the night. Joe Nambel’s.
“Stam-pede!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The earth shook.
Sparks catapulted from the fire toward the stars. Horses reared, whinnied. Men cursed. Mathew started for the remuda. Confused, Tess whirled around, looking, and began moving toward the hoodlum wagon. Groot had disappeared. Tess had no idea what she was supposed to do. Hitch the mules? No, the mules were picketed near the remuda. She stopped, turned, made her way in that direction. Lost her balance. Fell onto her buttocks.
Sitting there, she could feel the ground move.
An earthquake? No, that wasn’t right. She was pulled up, jerked to her feet, swept into Mathew’s arms.
His mouth moved. He screamed something. But whatever he said, the words did not reach her ears. He carried her toward the driver’s box of the chuck wagon, lifted her up. She grabbed hold, let her right foot find the wheel, pulled herself into the Studebaker.
“What is it?” Tess yelled. She knew, of course. Joe Nambel’s cry finally registered in her fogged mind. But she could not believe that. Unless she had gone mad, the three thousand longhorn steers they had been driving from the Rio Grande could not be heading—
She gasped. Heading . . . straight . . . for . . . our . . . camp.
Mathew had disappeared. From the light from the campfire, she could make out men trying to keep their horses calm, throwing on saddles, quickly, desperately. Mathew would be one of them. And Tom. And Lightning. The wagon shook. She looked back toward the hoodlum wagon. Then she saw Groot, coming from the back of the big Abingdon. He carried the double-barreled shotgun, a twelve-gauge with thirty-inch barrels, in one hand and a canvas sack—filled with shells—in the other. He moved like a drunkard, weaving this way and that. Or maybe it was Tess doing the weaving. Or the wagon, which felt as if it bounced along the old cattle trail.
Groot stumbled to the ground.
That’s when Tess heard the hooves, the bawling of panicking longhorns, a gunshot, another. Echoes. More curses. She understood then, and moved.
She dropped down from the wagon, lifted the hems of her skirt, ran to Groot. Found his arm. Pulled him to his feet. Shoved him toward his Studebaker.
“Go!” she roared.
“The . . . shot—”
“Go!”
She could not tell if he heard her, or maybe he just saw the wall moving out of the darkness. Groot moved. So did Tess. She picked up the shotgun as she followed the limping cook. Made a grab for the gunnysack filled with extra shells, but missed. There was no time for a second swipe. Her heart stopped. She forgot how to breathe. But she remembered how to run.
Groot was in the Studebaker, turning, lowering both hands. One snagged the shotgun and quickly dropped it into the wagon. The other latched on to Tess’s left wrist. He pulled—almost jerked her arm out of the shoulder socket—and then they collapsed onto the rocking seat of the wagon. Groot almost fell over the other side, but Tess latched on to the back of his suspenders, pulled. He gripped the bottom of the wooden seat with both hands.
Tess screamed.
Bedlam. All around them. Cattle—dull, rangy longhorn steers turned into demons of the night—thundered past them. Groot recovered now, found the shotgun. He aimed. Tess saw the muzzle flash, but she heard no report from the twelve-gauge. All she could hear . . . was hell.
But she felt something else. Behind her. Turning, her mouth opened, and she reached, grabbing for Mathew’s right arm, just as the wagon lurched, and he was falling. Somehow, she managed to latch on to his right arm. Her feet braced against the side of the wagon, while pain shot through her back. She had him. The wagon righted itself. Choking dust enveloped her, and she screamed.
“Groot! Help! Groot!”
If he heard, it would have been a miracle. She had not even heard her cries herself. Mathew must have found footing against the wagon wheel, because his other hand grabbed the siding, and suddenly he was in the driver’s box himself. Tess turned, and her eyes burned from the flash of Groot’s second shotgun blast. The cook opened the twelve-gauge’s breech.
His mouth moved. She didn’t hear the words, but she knew what he was asking.
She motioned futilely toward the hoodlum wagon. “I couldn’t get the sack,” she said.
Most likely, he did not hear her, either, not with the crashing, the wrecking
, the catastrophe all around them. He pitched the shotgun inside the wagon and sat down heavily on the rocking seat. Only then did he notice Mathew.
Mathew pulled his Colt from the holster, but dropped it onto the floorboard. Tess saw his right hand, barely making it out from the glimmer of fire. A wicked gash swept across the palm of his hand. She could only guess that his horse had shied away in pure panic, and the reins had carved a furrow across his hand. Quickly, she picked up the revolver, thumbed back the hammer, and fired into the charging mass of Texas longhorns.
The powder flash burned her eyes. But she cocked the pistol, pulled the trigger. Again. And again. Till she felt no resistance and understood that she had emptied the Colt. Her eyes had been closed the whole time, and when she opened them, after the orange and red and yellow flashes faded, she saw only darkness. The fire had been put out by the stampeding darkness. She tried to breathe, but dust filled her lungs. Slowly, she sank into the rocking chuck wagon, covered her mouth and nose with her hands, and inhaled. An arm wrapped around her shoulder, and Mathew, her husband, pulled her close.
They did not speak. They waited . . . for death.
* * *
Tom Garth spurred harder than he had ever spurred a horse in all his years. He leaned as low as he could in the saddle and gave the roan all the rein the gelding needed. He couldn’t see a thing, and prayed that Laredo Downs hadn’t been lying to him all those years, saying that a horse has a lot better eyesight than any cowboy.
He felt, more than saw, that he was clear. A roar went past him, and he had to turn hard on the reins to stop the frightened horse. Even then, the gelding pitched a few times, followed by a series of stutter steps. Tom backed the roan up a few more rods. He could sense the stampeding herd of cattle, hear the horrific sound the animals made. He wet his lips and tried to look across the herd. Tried to find what had been their camp.
Nothing.
Not even the light of the campfire.
His head swung northward. Gunshots. Now Tom understood why his father had told the boys to keep their short guns. His heart leaped toward his throat.
“Ma!” His own voice sounded as if it were deep in some cavern. “Pa! Lightning!”
A rider reined in beside him, its own horse pitching in the excitement, which caused Tom’s gelding to resume its bucks. Finally, both men managed to get their horses in control, but only by riding behind the herd of stampeding beef, eating dust. Tom glanced to his left at the newcomer, trying to recognize him.
The man had a bandanna pulled up over his nose and mouth. He held a revolver. Tom strained. Unless his eyes played tricks on him, this man wore no boots. In fact, his outfit consisted of filthy socks, well-ventilated summer long drawers, and a light-colored boiled shirt, along with the bandanna and a high-crowned hat.
“Who the hell are you?” Tom asked.
The rider didn’t answer. Just kicked his horse into a lope and let the dust swallow him. More riders came, but none slowed down as they galloped past Tom.
“Thompson . . .” his voice mouthed. His brain registered.
A. C. Thompson’s herd. That’s what had stampeded through their camp. That heat lightning must have spooked Thompson’s longhorns . . . How many beeves was A. C. Thompson running? What had his father said? Eighteen hundred.
He understood what had happened now. Thompson’s herd had bolted north. Had ransacked the Garth camp. And had crashed right smack-dab into three thousand longhorns bound for Dodge City. Now, both herds were stampeding north in a wild panic. Close to five thousand head of beef. Destroying anything and everything in their path.
“Oh . . . my . . . God!” Tom spurred the roan and hurried after the cattle.
He had no idea if his mother, his father, his brother, his friends were even still alive. He was alive. That’s all he knew. And his father, especially over these last couple of months, had taught him one lesson. On a cattle drive, especially this drive, the herd was all that mattered. Save the herd.
Save the herd.
* * *
A steer rammed into the side of the Studebaker, so hard the animal dropped dead with a broken neck. The chuck wagon rocked, tried to settle back, but just then one or maybe two or—hell, who knew, five, ten, more—beeves hit the wagon’s underside.
Tess reached for something to hold. She heard Mathew crying out, “We’re going over.”
The wagon pitched. Tess felt herself flying out into the darkness. She heard the wagon crash, then felt air rush out of her lungs. She lay still, tried to suck in oxygen, but could not manage even a breath. Her eyes would not close, but she could see nothing. Just darkness. She wondered: Am I dead?
Suddenly, she was moving, but not of her own accord.
Two hands gripped her blouse and pulled, pulled. Her lungs started to work again. She blinked. And saw the silhouette of her husband as he brought her to the shaking wagon.
“Help me!” She could just make out Mathew’s choking voice in the din of chaos.
“Are you . . . all right?”
She couldn’t tell if he had heard.
“It’s Groot.”
He turned. She moved beside him.
Groot lay on the ground, half-seated, gripping his right leg, the end of which disappeared.
Tess gasped. They reached for the underside of the Studebaker, still resting on its side. Tess came onto her knees. Her fingers found a hold. Already Mathew was lifting, and she joined, straining. The wagon budged, just barely enough for Groot to free his leg.
Groot wailed even louder. And just like that, the noise, that jarring, unnerving sound of hooves and hell, passed them, leaving behind only thick dust and echoes. Lightning flashed to the north, to the south. A horse and rider loped past them, but did not stop.
She seemed to understand it then. That she was alive. That they had survived. At least, she still lived. Mathew lifted Groot like a baby, carried him from the Studebaker, and gently laid him on a bed of trampled grass.
“Damn it all to hell!” Groot yelled. “My wagon’s ruint. Cattle’s spread out all to hell and gone. I didn’t get no peach cobbler. And now my gol-durned ankle’s practically busted in half.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Rain came with the dawn, soaking Tom Garth as he rode around the milling herd. His rain slicker remained in the hoodlum wagon back at camp, some miles down the trail. How many miles had those longhorns covered during the stampede? It felt like forever. The cattle were exhausted. So were men and horses. Yet he managed to smile, and a wave of relief washed over him when he spotted a familiar figure moving three longhorns out of a gully and toward the herd.
“Lightning!” Tom yelled.
“Don’t spook them, Tom,” Lightning called back. But he, too, grinned happily. The longhorns continued to join the others even after Lightning reined his horse to a stop.
“You start another stampede and Pa’ll raise holy hell.”
Lightning pulled his Russian from the holster. “I’m empty, by the way. Reckon Pa was right about carrying this .44.”
Tom could only nod. He had heard the shots as men tried to turn the stampeding mass of beef so that the cattle would slow, mill, and, eventually, come to a stop. Yet Tom had not even drawn his .38. He wondered if he had been too frightened, hanging on to the reins tightly, fearing falling beneath those churning hooves. Maybe not. Not terror, anyway. He had been too busy to be afraid.
“You seen Pa?” Tom asked.
“No.” He pointed to the northwest. “Spotted No Sabe and Joey Corinth back yonder way. Roping a steer that got stuck in a bog. How about you? Seen anybody we know?”
“Think I got a glimpse of Bradley Rush during the night. Only other folks I saw were strangers.”
“Yeah.” He pointed to a brindle steer. “That ain’t ours. Ain’t Pa’s road brand.”
“No.” He explained his theory, that the heat lightning down south had spooked A. C. Thompson’s herd into a stampede. That caused their own herd to run.
“We oug
hta go check on Ma,” Lightning said.
“Yeah.”
As they turned their horses, however, two men loped toward them. Tom recognized only one.
Laredo Downs and a man in gray-striped britches, muslin undershirt, soaking socks, and a soggy bowler hat reined in. Laredo grinned. The man with the gunmetal gray mustache did not.
“You boys is a sight for sore eyes,” Laredo said. He gestured at the man on the buckskin mare. “You two know A. C. Thompson.”
Tom nodded, recognizing the trail boss at last.
“Boys.” Thompson’s voice came out like a frog’s croak.
Laredo asked, “Where’s your pa?”
Tom’s head shook, but it was Lightning who answered. “We ain’t seen him since this whole thing started. Ma, neither.” His eyes glared at Thompson, who dropped his gaze and studied his pale hands, which gripped the horn of his saddle.
“Sorry,” A. C. Thompson croaked again.
“Ain’t your fault, A.C.,” Laredo said before looking back at Tom and Lightning. “We got beeves scattered across North Texas. Rain ain’t helpin’ matters, and we’ll need to start sortin’ out our steers from A.C.’s.” He pointed across the milling sea of beef. “Joe Nambel, Noguerra, and Meeker’s over yonder way. I ain’t seen hardly nobody from our crew since this ruction started.”
Lightning pointed. “That Mex rustler Pa hired and that Rush fellow were over yonder a half hour or so ago.”
“All right. I want you two to ride back to camp. See how things are there.” Laredo wet his lips, tried to swallow, and wiped the rain off his face. “Maybe . . . you want me to ride along with you?”
Tom shook his head.
“Maybe . . .” Thompson tried again. “Maybe I should ride back to your camp with you boys. Explain to Mathew what happened . . . if . . . if . . .”
Tom’s face hardened. Again, Lightning found the words.
“If my ma and pa are still alive? That what you mean?”
Laredo interrupted. “I wouldn’t advise that, A.C., but we appreciate your offer.”
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