He said, “How long ago was your wrangler shot?”
Bree said, “An hour, maybe. Poor Fred.”
“He ain’t dead.”
39
Fred had taken a bullet to the chest. The bullet Summers had fired was a .44 caliber, and it had torn a large and ragged hole into Fred’s ribcage. The front of his shirt was bloodied, and it looked like there was more bleeding inside.
Bree was the best rider there, so Aunt Ginny sent her galloping to get Granny Tate. The fastest horse on the ranch was Rabbit, one of Josh’s horses, but Josh had taken him on the trail drive. Rabbit was a mountain-bred mustang, but also had turned into a great cutting horse. So Bree grabbed a horse she called Flame. With Fred down, Bree saddled the horse herself, and then was off at a break-neck speed to get Granny Tate.
Aunt Ginny said, “Maybe we should move him into the house.”
She and Jessica were standing over Fred. Harlan was kneeling beside him, and they were using a fresh bedsheet torn into strips to cover the wound and maybe hold back the bleeding.
Harlan said, “He’s bleedin’ from the inside, too. That’s why he ain’t woken up. But at least the wound ain’t bubbling. Means a lung ain’t hit.”
Haley was there, standing a little behind Aunt Ginny and Jessica.
She said, “Have you seen this kind of wound before, Mister Harding?”
“All too many times.”
Aunt Ginny said, “Should we move him inside?”
Harlan shook his head. “Let’s wait for Granny Tate to get here. See what she thinks. She might want him upstairs, or she might want him in the bunkhouse. But too much movin’ him around won’t be good for him. Could make the bleedin’ worse.”
Charles returned that night, riding up to the ranch house when it was almost fully dark. The lighted windows of the first floor were like a beacon to him.
His work had been finished by late afternoon. He could have easily spent one more night at the line shack, but he missed Bree.
As he was riding up toward the house, he got a sense of strange quietness from the house. It should be near dinner time, but there seemed to be no activity. He knew they must have heard his horse clattering across the bridge. He almost expected Bree to be out on the front porch to see if it was him. And yet there was nothing. It was like they had left the lamps burning on the first floor, but had all gone away somewhere.
How strange, he thought.
He swung out of the saddle by the corral and gave the rein a couple of turns around the hitching rail. He would go in and see the family. Maybe get a kiss from Bree. Then he would come out and tend the horse himself. No need to bother Fred.
There were three steps leading up to the kitchen door, and he put a foot on the first step and was reaching for the door handle when the door was pulled wide open, and Charles found himself facing the working end of a revolver.
Harlan Carter was holding it. Harlan said, in his tight-mouthed way, “Charles. Good to have you home.”
Carter raised the pistol up and away from Charles, and released the hammer.
Charles stepped up and into the kitchen. “What in the world is going on here?”
“I’m hopin’ you can tell us.”
Bree came running from the parlor out into the kitchen and threw her arms around Charles. “I’m so glad you’re home!”
She was almost crying.
“What’s happened?” he said.
“It’s Fred. He’s been shot.”
“Shot? How?”
“Some man. Claimed he was here to kill you. And he shot Fred.”
Charles wasn’t sure he was hearing her right. He glanced to Carter, then back down to Bree, who was still hanging onto him tightly.
Charles said, “Shot? How bad off is he? Is he going to make it?”
He looked at Carter, and Carter silently shook his head.
PART FOUR
The Scout
40
It was early evening when they bedded the herd down for the night. Johnny stood by the chuck wagon, a tin cup filled with coffee in one hand. Ches was working on a pot of chili, and he had two large kettles of coffee going.
Zack came walking over, covered with dust. He said, “Hot out there.”
“Did you find anything we should know about?”
Zack had been scouting along their back trail.
Zack said, “If anyone’s following us, they’re better at this than I am.”
Johnny grinned. “There’s no one better than you.”
Zack returned the grin. “Then I guess there’s no one back there.”
Johnny said, “Get a good night’s sleep. In the morning, I want you to ride ahead of us. We’re a few miles from a stream Josh and I saw when we were scouting the area a month ago. Spring runoff was strong then, and at one point the stream widens out into a small pool. I’d like to know if that pool still has enough water for this herd to drink. They’ll drink it dry. But if it’s still full, or even part full, I don’t want to pass it by. Then we’ll have to take a sharp swing southeast. There’s a farm maybe a mile from that stream and I don’t want to take a chance on trampling any crops.”
“A farm? Out here? How can you grow anything out here?”
There was grass where they had camped for the night, but in the distance, maybe five miles to the west, was a rocky looking arroyo and much of the land between here and there looked like gravel and sage.
Johnny said, “Irrigation. Jack’s talked about it. The farm has a windmill to pull water from a well they dug, and then the water runs down into their fields. Corn, potatoes. They’re even thinking on trying wheat. Josh and I met them. A Mrs. Watkins. Her husband was away at the time. I promised her we’d keep our herd away from their fields.”
“All right. I’ll take a ride out in the morning.”
At first light, Zack had Ramon fetch him a horse, and he rode south to find the stream Johnny had mentioned.
Zack didn’t like the looks of the clouds off to the south. Dark and low-hanging. The wind had shifted in the night and was now coming directly from the south. If this continued, it would bring that bank of clouds right at them. Sudden rain could pound the ground hard out here in the grasslands and prairies, and sometimes bring hail stones with it. Not pleasant to ride through. Johnny would have to stop the herd and wait it out.
Zack had a rifle with him, tucked into his saddle boot. A canteen was tied to the front of his saddle. He rode light and easy, his eyes scanning the ground in front of him for tracks, then he would shift his gaze to distances further out, looking for any signs of motion. A couple of times he looked back and saw a large dust cloud that would be the herd in motion, but nothing else that might indicate anyone was on their back trail.
When he had ridden maybe three miles from the herd, the clouds has spread out and were now fully covering the sky. Zack could smell rain in the air. The wind was getting stronger and shaking the brim of his hat.
He got down from the saddle and loosened the cinch so the horse could breathe a bit.
He said, “We have a storm coming, boy.”
The horse didn’t graze. Often when a storm is coming, a horse won’t stand idly and pull grass loose with its teeth. This horse was a tan mustang with three white stockings, and it looked like it wanted to be anywhere else. Zack understood the feeling.
Storms were different out on the open grasslands, east of the mountains. They could come fast and the rain could be hard. Not that storms in the mountains or the valley he called home were easy, but there was sometimes an explosive quality to them out here. He had seen more than one herd stampeded by a sudden storm blasting down at them.
He decided the horse wasn’t going to graze or get any rest, so he tightened the cinch and swung back into the saddle.
Zack rode further south, up one low grassy hill and down another. He came across a barren stretch where the ground was mostly hard gravel, with occasional strands of grass trying to stand tall. Then he was back riding over so
d again.
The grass was starting to show brown, but some of the springtime green was still there. The wind was strong, and rich with the smell of earth and rain, though no drops had yet started to fall. He hoped he could be back at the chuck wagon before it did. Maybe hunker down under the awning. He had been shortsighted when he left camp this morning, and left his slicker in the wagon.
After about half a mile, he came to the stream Johnny and Josh had spoken of. He followed it along as it bent southwest, and came to the pond Johnny had mentioned. It was maybe fifty feet across and stretched along for a couple hundred feet more. A sizeable amount of water. It would make a grand swimming hole in the hot, summer months, except by then it would probably be little more than a large puddle. At the moment, there should be enough water here to handle the herd and for Ches to fill his water barrel.
Zack swung out of the saddle again and let his horse drink a little. He cupped his hands and drank a few mouthfuls, the water spilling out between his fingers, and then he pulled his canteen from the saddle and filled it.
Johnny had said there was a farmhouse not far beyond this pond. Zack wanted to reach the farmhouse and then get back to the chuck wagon before the rain hit. He swung back into the saddle.
He rode what he estimated to be a little more than half a mile when he saw a windmill standing tall, and spinning hard in the wind. Not far from it was a barn with a peaked roof. The barn was painted red, but in this light it looked more like a muted purple. Out behind it was a buckboard.
Zack saw someone coming out of a long, narrow building. Zack had never been a farmer, but he knew enough about it to know this was the henhouse. The person coming out of it was a woman, her hair tied back in what was probably a bun—he couldn’t see from this distance—and she had a wicker basket in one hand.
He thought he would ride in and talk to her husband a bit about the herd, and then start back.
She heard him coming and stopped to wait for him. He reined up beside her and touched the brim of his hat.
“’Morning, Ma’am.”
She said, “Good morning.”
He would have placed her somewhere in her early thirties, and was struck by how pretty she was. Her eyes were a gray-blue, and her nose and the curve of her cheek were what struck him as perfection. He almost forgot what he was going to say.
He felt a little ashamed of himself, acting like a schoolboy over a married woman.
He said, “I was just wondering if I could talk with your husband for a bit.”
“You could,” she said. “But he’s not home right at the moment.”
The wind whipped at Zack, and the hat almost came off his head. “Well, I hope he’s not on the trail right now. We have some bad weather coming in.”
As he said that, a large rain drop splattered on the brim of his hat. This drop was followed by a few more, falling in quick succession.
She grinned. “It would seem so. He went into town for supplies. I’m sure he’ll wait it out before he comes back.”
“Well, ma’am,” he said. The rain was coming down harder. “I’m with a bunch of drovers and we have a herd back there...”
Then the sky opened and a sheet of rain washed over the land. She turned her back to it and Zack held onto his hat, and his horse turned and wanted to run. No need to keep talking, he figured. She wouldn’t hear him anyway.
She started to head back to the house, and turned to him. She shouted over the roar of the rain, “You can wait in the barn if you like!”
He was about to shout back, Thank you kindly, when he saw it. A long black funnel dropping out a cloud. It snaked its way down, touching the land not a quarter mile from the house.
She saw it too. She called out, “Twister!”
His horse reared. He tried to keep control of it. He was going to ask her if they had a storm shelter, but his horse bucked and then reared again, and Zack fell backwards and slammed hard on the wet sod.
It was a moment before he could catch his breath, and he rolled over onto his hands and knees. He looked up and saw the funnel was looming large just beyond the corn fields. It was coming toward the farm, and it was coming fast.
41
Zack’s hat had tumbled away somewhere into the rain. He held his hand up over his eyes as he pushed himself to his feet. The rain was cold and his clothes were already soaking with it. His horse was gone.
The woman was beside him but looking off toward the barn and calling something out. Zack couldn’t hear her because of the roar of the rain, and the oncoming twister sounded like a locomotive.
Zack grabbed her by and spun her around. Her bun had come loose in the wind and rain and her hair was falling down her back, as wet as if she’d just come in from a swimming hole.
“Do you have a storm cellar?” Zack shouted the words and still wasn’t sure she heard him, but she nodded.
She pointed to an area behind him. Maybe thirty feet away was a wooden door on the ground, with a handle something like what you would see on a barn door.
“Get down in there!” he called out to her.
A boy ran from the barn. He was maybe twelve, and he was calling out, “Ma!”
“Both of you!” Zack called out to them. “Get down into the cellar!”
She shouted to Zack, “My daughter! She’s in the house!”
Zack looked to the twister. It had been a quarter mile away but had already cut that distance in half. The wind was whipping the rain at him so fiercely that it stung his face. He had to raise a hand to protect his eyes. The twister was writhing in the air as it moved along, and it looked like it was coming right at them.
“Get into the cellar!” he shouted to the woman and boy, and he started for the house at a dead run.
The farmyard was muddy and in places flooding because of the rain. He splashed through it and then went sliding in his smooth boot soles and went face-down in the mud. He didn’t have time to think about it. He pushed himself to his feet and continued running. When he got to the kitchen door, the pounding rain had already washed all of the mud from him.
“Hello!” he called out. “Where are you?”
He heard a girl’s voice. Small and meek. “In here.”
He found her in the parlor. Maybe five years old, in a dress and with a little apron tied about her waist. Her hair was in braids.
He didn’t have time to talk to her, to tell her he was here to help and don’t be afraid. The wind from the twister was getting violent. The window panes were rattling and the front door was torn open.
He grabbed her around the waist without a word and began running through the house to the kitchen door. A window pane came free and crashed to the kitchen floor and the girl screamed.
Zack didn’t have time to ask if she was hurt. He kept running.
He splashed through the puddles and the small areas of flooding in the back yard. One maple that stood solitary behind the house was bending nearly to the ground. A loose board went flying by. The sky was nearly black. The twister was now close and so loud Zack couldn’t hear if the girl was crying or screaming.
He got to the cellar door and pulled it open and dropped the girl in and then climbed down in and pulled the door shut. There was a timber to slide in place and hold the door shut.
It was dark inside.
“Are you all right?” he called out.
“Yes!” the woman called back.
“Momma!” the girl was crying.
“Get to the back wall!” Zack called out, and made his way through the darkness toward the back.
The cellar wasn’t very large. The walls and floor were earthen. It had been dug from the ground and was functional but nothing more.
The woman was beside him. She was holding onto the girl tightly, and Zack pulled them both in and wrapped his arms around them.
The roar outside was making his ears ring. It was what it must have sounded like to be caught underneath a train. He felt the ground shaking. Then it was hard to breathe, as though th
e air was being sucked out of the cellar. Dirt was being whipped up and was catching him in the face.
Then it began to grow quieter and there was air again. The rumbling in the ground began to fade.
“Is everyone all right?” he said. He didn’t have to shout this time.
The woman nodded. He couldn’t see her in the darkness but he could feel the motion.
She said, “Luke?”
Zack heard the boy’s voice. “I’m here, Ma. Is it over?”
“Sounds like it,” Zack said. “You all wait here. I’m gonna check.”
Zack slid the timber aside to free the door, the pushed the door open and looked out.
The clouds were still dark and heavy, the rain was easing off. There was wind, but nothing more than you would normally expect in the open country, where there was almost always wind.
He climbed out. The twister was gone. They often dissipated as quickly as the appeared.
He looked to where the farmhouse had been. In its place were scattered and broken boards, and more boards were scattered all about the yard. The barn was in the same condition as the house. Just like if you built a house of cards on a table, then swept your hand through it and watched the cards scatter about the table top.
It was gone. The home these people had worked so hard to build. Gone like almost like it had never been there at all.
42
The rain was falling lightly. Zack was soaked as though he had fallen into a lake, and chilled to the bone. The pistol at his side was drenched, and he was sure the powder in the cartridges in both his gun and the loops on his belt was wet and useless.
The clouds overhead covered the sky from one horizon to the other, so Zack couldn’t get a fix on what time it was. He never carried a watch, and usually relied on the position of the sun for such a thing, or the stars and moon at night.
He had walked out for a look at the crops, and was now returning to the farmhouse. Or, where the house had been.
Trail Drive (The McCabes Book 5) Page 18