He and Zack started out. But they didn’t do so by swinging into the saddle. It was still fully dark and a horse could step into a hole. Also, they didn’t want to spook the cows that had been rounded up. Johnny estimated they had over fifteen hundred head on hand that would be taken to market. If they stampeded, it would take the boys days to round them up again. The idea was to get them to market while the grass was still springtime green, and the streams were running high with runoff.
Johnny and Zack walked along. Johnny had the rein in his left hand and kept his right free. Old habits. Zack was doing the same.
Ahead of them they could see the small pinpoint of light. The campfire in the distance was still burning.
Zack spoke, keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t travel with the distance. “Kind’a reminds me of three years ago. Seeing a campfire in the distance.”
Johnny said, “Like you said, could be nothing at all.”
“Let’s hope.”
They kept walking.
The cows were down for the night, and spread out. Longhorns tended not to bunch together, if given their druthers. Johnny and Zack walked along past the herd and their horses loped along behind them.
After maybe half a mile the sky started to lighten. First stars began dropping out of sight, then the sky became a sort of dark gray. Then it grew to a steel gray and the terrain about them started coming to life. Junipers and an occasional short, fat pine, spread out with sometimes hundreds of feet of grass between them. The land rose and fell in gentle hills.
They could now see where the land rose into little humps that could trip a horse, or fell away into small, grassy ravines. Time to mount up.
Johnny and Zack rode along easily. Turned out the camp was only about three miles away. Johnny and Zack covered the distance in a little over an hour. They found it deserted.
At the center of the camp were the blackened remains of the campfire. Handfuls of dirt had been dropped on it to extinguish it. They could see where five men had bedded down for the night. They found cigarette butts and a couple empty cans of beans. The horses had been picketed back a ways.
Johnny said, “A string of fifteen horses.”
Zack nodded. “That’s five to a man.”
“A lot of horses for a small group of men just passing through.”
The tracks headed away south. Hoof prints were in the grass, and in some places the hooves had torn up small divots.
Johnny said, “Maybe we ought to follow ‘em a while.”
The riders headed south for a while, but then started swinging east.
Johnny said, “There’s no reason for them to circle east from here. All the ranches in the area are to the west. So’s Jubilee.”
Zack nodded. “Bozeman’s southwest, and Helena’s to the northwest. There’s no reason for them to turn east at all, unless they’re trying to circle around the herd.”
They continued along. At one point, they estimated the riders to have an hour’s lead on them.
Johnny reined up where it looked like the riders had stopped to let their horses blow. As good a spot as any for Johnny and Zack to do the same.
“Think they know they’re being followed?” Zack said.
Johnny nodded. “If they’re worth their salt, they do.”
“I’m thinking they have to be those horse thieves Falcone told you about.”
“I can’t imagine who else they might be.”
After a short time, they continued along. Johnny pulled a length of jerked beef from his vest pocket and began chewing. Zack did the same.
About mid afternoon, Zack looked back over his shoulder and said, “Riders comin’.”
They stopped and waited. They didn’t have to wait long, because the riders were coming at a good clip.
Johnny grinned when he saw who it was. Josh and Dusty.
The boys reined up.
Dusty said, “You two make good time. We were starting to think we wouldn’t catch up to you before nightfall.”
Johnny said to Josh, “You look well-rested, for a man coming back from his honeymoon.”
Zack was grinning. “I wouldn’t think a newly-married man would be getting much sleep.”
Dusty said, “He ain’t stopped blushing since he rode into camp.”
Josh gave an impatient nod. “All right, all right. Leave me alone.”
Josh had a Winchester in one hand and Dusty was carrying Johnny’s Sharps. They each had another tucked into a saddle boot.
Dusty said, “We thought you might need these,” and tossed the sharps to Johnny.
Johnny said, “You boys made really good time catching up to us. But now, we’re gonna take things a little slower. I don’t want to catch up to them until after dark. Give them time to build a fire. It’ll give us the chance to go in and get a look at ‘em.”
The men posted one guard. A man to stand outside the camp, beyond the circle of firelight. He had a rifle in his hands, and he paced about in the bored way a night sentry sometimes does. He had a cigarette in his mouth.
His hard-soled riding boots occasionally scuffed on the gravel underfoot. The leather of his gunbelt would creak a bit from time to time. He heard a wolf calling from somewhere off in the distance. He was experienced enough to know it was nowhere close. What he didn’t hear was Dusty coming up behind him.
He felt the cold steel of the blade of a bowie knife against his throat.
Dusty said, “Don’t say a word, or I’ll cut you a new smile from ear to ear.”
Dusty left the man about a mile from the riders’ camp. Dusty used his own lariat to tie him hand-and-foot, so all the man could do was wiggle around a little in the grass.
The man said, “You can’t leave me like this. There’s wolves out there.”
“We won’t be gone that long. You’ll be all right.”
Dusty rejoined the others. They were waiting just outside the circle of firelight, upwind so the string of horses wouldn’t catch their scent.
The moon hadn’t yet risen, but the sky was clear and the stars were creating a sort of faint, gray lighting. Between that and residual firelight that reached them, Dusty could barely see his father.
Dusty held both hands in front of his chest. Then he touched the fingertips of both hands together, the wrists apart, roughly forming the letter A. Indian sign-language for tie-up or tied-up. Johnny nodded. He got the idea.
Four men were in the camp, milling about the fire. One was standing and he had a coffee cup in one hand. Another was kneeling by the fire. They had apparently gathered some wood from the pines scattered about. The fire smelled smoky, so Johnny figured they were burning green wood. One man was stretched out on his soogan, his hat over his eyes. A fourth was sitting, sticking a twig in the fire and then pulling it out and watching the small flame dance on the end of it. There was light conversation, but Dusty and the others were too far out to catch the words.
Johnny motioned toward one side of the camp, then pointed toward Dusty and Josh. They nodded and started away in the direction Johnny had indicated. Johnny then motioned to Zack, who headed off toward the other side.
They had discussed this plan before they approached the fire. Dusty and Josh knew just what to do.
They moved along slowly through the grass on their hands and knees. It was soft and slippery, and made no sound as they crawled along.
They stopped at a point that put them at three o’clock to the fire, with Pa at six o’clock. To go much further would put them in risk of falling downwind of the horses.
Dusty pulled his pistol but didn’t cock it. A sound like that would carry in the night. Josh did the same.
The plan had been for Johnny to wait fifteen minutes for Dusty, Josh and Zack to take their places. By Dusty’s reckoning, it had been about fifteen minutes.
Johnny called out, “Hello, the camp!”
The three men who were down scrambled to their feet. One of them grabbed a rifle and the other three pulled pistols.
One of them called out,
“Come on in, nice and easy.”
Johnny came in, hands in the air.
The one who had spoken said, “Not that we don’t mean to be friendly, mister. We just gotta be careful.”
“I don’t blame you,” Johnny said. “You been doggin’ my herd for at least a day. I gotta ask why.”
The men looked at each other. Apparently they hadn’t been expecting this.
The one who had spoken said, “We don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re just passing through.”
Johnny shook his head. “If you were just passing through, you would have continued on south. Or turned west. Right now, you’re about three miles from our herd, the same distance you were last night.”
Johnny was letting his hands drift downward as he spoke.
One of them said, “Hold it, mister. We’ll shoot. I mean it.”
Johnny said, “I would drop those guns. You’re surrounded.”
That was the cue, Dusty figured. He cocked his gun. Josh did the same. Zack had taken a Winchester with him, and he jacked in a round. The sound of all of this carried well in the night, and the four men were looking off at the darkness around them.
“Zeke!” one of them called out. “You out there?”
Johnny said, “Zeke’s down and out for a little while. He won’t be any good to you. Throw down those guns.”
The first man who had spoken raised his pistol and aimed it at Johnny. He called out, “You all come in and throw down your guns, or I’ll put a bullet in this man!”
Dusty could see the position of the hammer of the man’s gun. He hadn’t thought to haul back the hammer first. These men were cattle thieves but not experienced gunfighters.
Dusty called out to him, “You gotta cock the gun if you want it to work!”
That was when Johnny’s gun hand shot down and then came up with his own gun. The man cocked his but Johnny fired first. The others were cocking and bringing their guns up, but the three surrounding the camp unloaded on them. Dusty got three shots off and so did Josh. Dusty thought he counted four from Zack’s rifle, maybe five. One of the men at the campfire spun around like he was doing a little dance, then dropped to the ground. The head of another man snapped back like he had taken a punch, and then fell over. The third started running but got only thirty feet from the fire before he fell over from the bullet he had taken. The string of horses all bolted into the night.
Dusty and Josh got to their feet and came on in. Zack was doing the same.
The three at the fire were dead. The one who had spun around had three bullets in his chest and two more in the side of his ribs. One had a bullet dead center in his forehead.
Zack said, “That was my shot. I was aiming at him.”
One had taken two more bullets to the chest. The one who had run a bit had a bullet in his chest and one in his shoulder.
Johnny dumped out his empty cartridge, and thumbed in a new one.
Dusty said, “I’ll go get the one I tied up.”
Josh went with him. A quarter moon was peeking into view over the horizon as they approached the spot where Dusty had left him. They could see for a fair distance now, and the man was gone. His ropes had been cut.
Josh said, “Looks like had a knife on him.”
“Dang,” Dusty said. “I didn’t see any knife sheathed on his belt or in his boot or anywhere, but he must have had a jackknife tucked into a pocket. I should have searched him more thoroughly.”
“Well, he’s gone. Nothing can be done about it now.” Josh slid his gun into his holster.
“Now we won’t be able to find out if these men are the ones Bertram Reed’s man rode out to see.” Dusty holstered his own gun. “And it means I’ve lost a good lariat.”
21
Ches had two shovels in his chuckwagon, and the men grabbed them and buried the four dead men in unmarked graves.
Johnny stood, looking down at the humps of grass.
Ches said, “We buried ‘em as close to six feet down as we could. Maybe discourage the wolves from getting to ‘em.”
Johnny supposed it would seem a little cold to a man from civilized parts to just leave the bodies out here. But the nearest incorporated municipality was Jubilee, and it would have taken half a day to haul the bodies all the way there. And even then, Marshal Falcone’s jurisdiction ended at the town line. A rider would have to be sent to Bozeman, where he would wire the territorial marshal. If the marshal was out in the field, it could be days or even weeks before someone brought the telegram to him.
Someday, Johnny thought, Montana would probably have statehood, and the territory would all be divided up into counties and there would be laws and such. But at the moment, this was just open land, open and wild as it had ever been. The only law was the law of a man’s gun. And the night before, the law had spoken. These men had drawn guns on Johnny, and you don’t draw a gun on a man if you’re not prepared to receive the consequences.
Zack was standing beside Johnny. “What do you suppose would be Reed’s motivation for sending these men out here? Small-time horse thieves and cattle rustlers. They might be able to cut a few head at night, but it wouldn’t cause us any real problem. All it would do is get them killed if they were caught.”
“We’ll probably never know,” Johnny said. “They may not even be the same men.”
Zack nodded.
“Come on,” Johnny said. “Let’s mount up. We’ve got a job to do.”
Every trail drive has at least one lead steer. A steer the others would follow. For Johnny and the trail drives he had made down to the railheads, that steer was Old Blue. Some longhorns were various shades of brown or gray, and others tended to be spotted with brown and white. Old Blue was a sort of light gray around the neck and body, more of a charcoal gray around the snout and down along the legs and tail. The light gray struck Johnny as having a little bluish hue in the dimmer light of early morning, and so he had taken to calling the animal Old Blue.
This was the only steer that returned to the ranch with Johnny and the boys after a trail drive. Old Blue was just too effective a leader to part with. Johnny had received offers from drovers to buy Old Blue, but had always turned them down.
Old Blue was larger and more heavily muscled than most. Johnny remembered years ago seeing the man called Bodine drop a loop around Old Blue’s horns and then as he tried to tie off on his saddle horn, Old Blue pulled and one of Bodine’s fingers got caught between the rope and the saddle horn, and the finger was popped off. A painful way to lose a finger.
They had been on the trail, a few day’s ride to the nearest settlement. Sanborn had been with them as the trail cook in those days, and he heated a knife until it glowed red and then sealed off the wound.
Johnny had seen more than one cowhand lose a finger that way. Kennedy had a missing finger on his left hand, and Johnny hadn’t asked but wouldn’t have been surprised if he had lost it to an ornery steer.
Old Blue was nearly twelve years old. Johnny didn’t figure he would have many trail drives left in him, but with the coming railroad, this would be the last long-distance drive the old boy would have to make.
Johnny was sitting in his saddle watching Old Blue chew on some springtime grass when Josh came riding up.
“Got ‘em tallied at twenty nine hundred and three with our brand or the Swan brand, and eight hundred and forty-one with Zack’s.”
“You satisfied with the count?”
Josh nodded. “About as accurate as we’re gonna get.”
“All right. Then in the morning, we start ‘em moving.”
Josh looked over at the old steer.
“What’re we gonna do with Old Blue afterward?”
“I was thinking maybe we retire him. Let him graze. He’s earned the right to have a life of leisure for his last few years.”
Chuck Cole was still with them. Even though he would be staying behind at the ranch, he was an experienced drover and Josh found him a big help during the roundup.
; The sky was growing dark and Ches had a big campfire going. A few of the hands were out riding night herd, but most were sitting in the grass with a bowl of beef stew.
Johnny came riding in, and Fred took the reins from him as he swung out of the saddle.
Johnny grabbed a bowl of stew and went over to where Chuck was sitting. Zack was there, and Josh.
Johnny said, “We’re gonna start ‘em moving in the morning. Chuck, you and Fred can ride back to the ranch at first light.”
Chuck nodded.
Johnny said, “There’s something I want you to do. Go into town and see if Reed’s man Chandler is still around. And see Falcone and ask if he’s seen anything interesting. Reed left town the day of Josh’s wedding, but I’d feel better if Chandler was gone, too. And I’d like to know what any other men who might be working for Reed have been up to. There’s something about Reed I don’t trust.”
Ches was standing nearby, a leather apron tied on over his jeans and the butt of his revolver sticking out from the side.
He said, “That’s what they call good judgment. That man is a snake. I feel it in my bones.”
Johnny said to Chuck, “We won’t be far down the trail. I don’t expect to make many miles the first few days. Ride on out and tell me what you find.”
“Yessir.”
Johnny took a spoonful of stew. “Ches, I have to say, this is some of the best stew I’ve ever tasted.”
Ches was smiling. “Butchered me a steer yesterday. Brought the potatoes from Zack’s root cellar.”
Dusty came riding in. He swung out of the saddle. “I could smell that stew a couple hundred yards out,” he said.
He grabbed a bowl and joined them.
Johnny said, “I’ll be riding point. I want you there with me, Josh. I was thinking Kennedy can ride right swing, and Coyote left swing.”
Josh nodded. “Sounds good.”
Johnny looked to Dusty. “Son, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I want you to serve as the wrangler, along with Ramon. We need good men watching over the remuda, and there ain’t two better when it comes to working with horses.”
Trail Drive (The McCabes Book 5) Page 9