"Fool kid," Ben said, irritably.
"Well," I said, "we've all put in our time at being fools. He had no corner on it, and he was lonesome for a girl. The last time he was in the cabin," I continued, "he had fresh mud on his boots, and there was mud dropped from his horse's hoofs. Made me a mite suspicious." That was all I wanted to say.
Ben considered that. "Could be picked up in a lot of places. Lacy Creek, maybe ... or over east. The Colorado is too far east."
"The Colorado?"
He nodded. "We've got one here in Texas, too."
"The stolen cattle," I said, "seemed headed southeast. Do you suppose he got wind of something?"
He shrugged. "He might have gone off huntin' that gal and stumbled into something."
"You know anybody with a rifle that has kind of prongs on the butt plate?"
Ben considered that, then shook his head. "I seen 'em on one kind of a Sharps, and some of the Kentucky rifles had 'em. Yeah, I know." He began saddling up. "I've seen those marks, too."
"Ben, we've got to bait the rustler. He's hunting young stuff. Let's leave some where he can get it, then follow him."
"Maybe," Roper was doubtful. "There's just you, me and Fuentes now, and work enough for six--even if it doesn't come to a shootin' war."
"Barby Ann will make a hand. I mean, she'll pitch in and help, but we'll need more."
With our horses saddled, we went back to the bunkhouse. Joe had been moved to the ranch house, where Barby Ann could see to him when we boys were out.
I fed a couple of cartridges into my Winchester and carried it to the saddle. I slung the saddlebags, then put the Winchester into the boot. We were stalling. All of us were stalling. There was work to do and we knew it, but we were just sort of waiting around for something to happen.
Finally, I straddled my bronc and rode out where the cattle were. Fuentes lifted a hand and turned back to the ranch house for breakfast. There were too many cattle for one rider, but they were busy with the fresh graze for the time. I rode around a mite, tucking in a few strays that were taking a notion to wander. Then I rode up on the high ground for a look around.
Far off to the west, there was just a blue haze hiding the cap-rock, and from up high I could see the dim shape of some low hills against the horizon ... maybe twenty miles away.
There was a thin green line where Lacy Creek was, and where Ol' Brindle seemed to hang out. It was better country for sheep than for cattle, and coming from mountain country I was less prejudiced against sheep than most cowmen.
Bert Harley should be back. Yet I saw no sign of movement out there. It was a vast sweep of country. Far to the east was a line that might be a branch of the Concho ... I didn't know this country anywhere near well enough, and had to guess at what I didn't know ... always a dangerous thing.
Ben rode up to me. "Rossiter figures we should start branding when we can. He wants to get the herd out of the country before they're scattered to hell an' gone."
"All right." I pointed toward a shoulder of hill on the southern skyline. "What's that?"
"Flattop, I reckon. Air's clear this morning."
"You ever been to Harley's place?"
"No. As a matter of fact, Bert's never invited no visitors. Stays to hisself. You know him. He's a good man but he's got kind of an ingrown disposition and he just shuts people out. I don't even rightly know where his place is. This here country's only had people in it four or five years, you know, and nobody knows it well."
Ben continued. "Marcy explored through here, but I don't rightly know where he went. North of here, I expect. Folks have been kind of moving gradually thisaway, but many have been killed by Indians and some just gave up after a couple of dry years and moved on."
He stopped to scan the horizon. "There's usually said to be six ranches in the basin, as we call it. That's the major's outfit, Balch and Saddler, Spur, Stirrup-Iron, Bert Harley's place, and off to the southeast there's a Mexican outfit ... Lopez. We never see much of them. They mind their own affairs and most of their graze is south of them."
Ben paused. "I never seen Lopez. He was here before any of us, but from all I hear, he's a good man."
He drifted off, cutting a couple of bunch-quitters back into the herd.
Branding that lot of cattle was a big job for three men, even if Barby Ann helped. It would be slow, and it would mean a lot of work. For myself, while never shirking any job, I'd no wish to tackle that one.
Bert Harley showed up about the middle of the morning, and I headed off for the ranch. Fuentes was there. He'd been up to the line-cabin. "Amigo? That shirt you wore when you were shot at? The red-checked one?"
"What about it?"
"Did you bring it back with you? Back here?"
"As a matter of fact, I washed it out one day and when it was dried, I folded it and left it under the pillow on my bunk. Why do you ask?"
"I thought that was what you'd done. Seen it there a time or two ... But now it's gone."
Well, I looked at him, wondering what he was getting at, and all of a sudden it came to me. "You think Danny borrowed my shirt?"
"Look ..." he held out a dirty blue shirt that was surely Danny's. "He was going courting, no? He saw your shirt, figured you'd not care, and swapped his dirty shirt for your clean one, all red and white checked."
Ben Roper had come up, listening. "You think somebody figured he was you?"
"Well, I was on a hot trail. I don't know which horse I was riding that day, but I believe it was a gray. If he wore my shirt and was riding a grulla ... at a little distance?"
That was all that was said at the time.
We started the branding at daylight. Fuentes was the best man on a rope, so Ben and I swapped the throwing and branding. It was slow work with just the three of us, but Tony never missed a throw and we worked the day through. It was hot, dusty work, and most of the stuff we were branding was bigger, older and a whole lot meaner than was usual.
It was coming up to noon when Fuentes suddenly called out. "Riders coming!"
Ben turned around, glanced toward the trail, then walked to his horse and slid his Winchester from the boot. I just stood waiting. Branding or no, I had my smoker on, expecting trouble.
It was Balch. Ingerman was nowhere in sight, but Vansen and Klaus were with him.
Balch drew up close by and looked over at me. "If you're branding, I want a rep right with you."
"Fine," I said, "We're branding, so get him over here."
"I'll leave Vansen," he said.
"Like hell," I said. "You'll leave a cattleman, not a gunman."
"I'll leave whoever I damn well please!" Balch said roughly.
It was hot and dusty and I was tired. Only a moment before, we'd finished throwing and branding a five-year-old maverick that had given us trouble, and I was in no mood for nonsense.
"Balch, anybody who comes over here had better be a cattleman. And if he is, he's going to lend a hand when we need him. We haven't any time for freeloaders. Every head we've got in this bunch belongs to Stirrup-Iron or Spur, but your cattleman is free to look 'em over whenever you like. But I'd rather you'd stay yourself. I want a man who knows cattle and who knows brands."
"You think I don't?" Vansen said belligerently.
"These are cattle," I said roughly, "not playing cards or bottles."
His lips tightened, and for a moment I thought he was going to ride me down, but Balch put out a hand to stop him.
"Hunting trouble, Talon?" he asked coolly.
"We've had trouble," I replied shortly. "Benton shot Joe Hinge, or didn't you know? If there's to be any riders from your outfit around here, you handle the job yourself or send somebody who is only a cattleman, not a gunman."
Vansen swung down and unfastened his gunbelt. "You said no gunman. All right, my guns are off. Want to take off yours?"
I glanced at Roper. He had a Winchester in his hands. "All right," I said. I took off my gunbelt and handed it to Fuentes, and Vansen came in swinging.
They didn't call him Knuckles for nothing. He was supposed to be a fistfighter. There'd been bunkhouse talk that he had whipped a lot of men. I don't know where he found them.
He swung his first punch when my back was half-turned, but I heard his boot grate on gravel as he moved, and threw up an arm. He had swung a right for my face with my right side toward him, and my arm partially blocked his punch. Then I backhanded him with a doubled fist that staggered him. Turning around just as he was getting his feet under him, I beat him to the punch with a left to the face, ducked under a pawing swing and hit him in the belly with a right.
His wind went out with a grunt, and I took a step back, nearer Fuentes and my gun, which was slung from his saddle horn within easy reach.
"You better take your boy home," I said to Balch. "He's no fighter."
Vansen's breath back, he lunged at me and I stepped in. hitting him with a short right to the chin. He dropped to his knees in the dust, then to his face.
"Better pet him a new name, too," I said. "Better call him Wide-Open Vansen from now on."
Balch's face was stiff with anger. For a moment, I thought he was going to get off his horse and tackle me himself, and that would be no bargain. Whatever else Balch was, my guess was that he was a fighter ... And I'd already been warned that he was better with a gun than any of his would-be gunmen.
"I'll send a cattleman," he said coldly.
"You send him, and he's welcome. We're working cows here." I paused. "Another thing ... Is Tory Benton still working for you?"
"No ... he's not. That shootin' was his own idea. If he's still around, that's his idea, too."
Taking my gunbelt, I buckled it on. They had turned to go, waiting only for Vanson to crawl into the saddle, but I said, "Balch?"
He turned, his eyes still ugly with anger.
"Balch, you're no damned fool. Don't let us fly off the handle and do something we'll both be sorry for. What I said before, I still believe. Somebody is stealing your cattle and ours, and that somebody would like nothing better than to see us in a shooting war. It takes no kind of a brain to pull a trigger, but if we come out of this with anything, it will be because we're too smart to start shooting."
He turned his back on me and rode off, but I knew he was shrewd, and what I had said would stay in his mind. As they rode away, Ben Roper turned to look at me and shook his head. "I didn't know you could fight," he said. "When you hit him with that right, I thought you'd killed him."
"Come on," I said, "let's brand some cows."
Nobody else came around, and we worked cattle for the next three days without interruption. It was hard, hot, rough work, but none of us had ever known much else, and we leaned into it to get the job done. As we branded stock they were driven over into a separate little valley nearby, where they could be held and watched over by Harley.
Each morning we were up and away from the ranch house before daybreak. And each night, when we'd packed our supper away, we wasted little time. Mostly we were too tired for playing cards or even talking. The cattle we were handling were rarely calves, but big, raw stuff that had somehow run wild on the range without branding.
Then we took a day off ... it was Sunday ... and just loafed. Only my loafing was of a different kind. "I'm taking a ride," I told Barby Ann.
She just looked at me. Never, since I'd refused to accept five hundred dollars to kill Roger Balch, had she spoken to me except to reply to a question.
Fuentes was there, and Ben Roper.
"There's work to do, and I know it," I said, "and I doubt if I'll be home by daybreak."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to find Danny," I said.
We were shorthanded and there were cattle to hold, but the thing was eating on me, worrying me. If he was dead, as he probably was, that would be one thing. But suppose he was hurt? Lying out there somewhere, slowly dying?
Danny meant nothing to me, except that he was another human being and we rode for the same brand. But I knew the others had been thinking of it also. Throwing the saddle on my own dun, I rode out of there when the sun was high. Topping out on the ridge, I pulled my hat brim down to shield my eyes from the sun, and scanned the country.
There had been rain, and the trail would be wiped out. Yet he had been riding a grulla and wearing my red and white checked shirt. And he had probably been looking for Lisa, who was somewhere south and east ... Or so we believed.
South and east was Kiowa country, Comanche country, and the land where the Lipans rode. Even the supply wagons from the ranches crossed it only with a heavily-armed escort. And into that country I was riding ... alone.
Chapter 21
I rode alone into a land of infinite distance. Far, far away stretched the horizon, where, the edge of the plains met the sky. Yet having ridden such distances before, I knew there was no edge, no end, but only a farther horizon, a more mysterious distance. There were antelope there, occasional groups of buffalo left from the vast herds that for a few years had covered the land, constantly moving like a vast black sea.
My dun rode with ears pricked toward the distance, for he was as much the vagabond and saddle tramp as I, always looking beyond where he was, always eager for the new trail, the new climb, the new descent.
I followed no trail, for the rain had left none. I rode my own way, letting my mind seek out, letting the horse detect. For the dun had been a wild mustang, and they are as keen to scent a trail as any hound, and as wary as any wolf. Somewhere to the south and east, cattle had been taken, and although their tracks were gone, their droppings were not.
More than that, land lies only in certain ways, and a traveling man or a driven herd holds to the possibilities. Rarely, for example, will a man top out on a peak unless looking over the land, and a herd of cattle will never do so. Cattle, like buffalo, seek the easiest route, and are as skillful as any surveyor in finding it.
The herd would go around the hills, over the low passes, down the easy draws. Hence, to a degree, I must follow there. The trouble was these were also the ways the Indian would go until he got within striking range of his goal. Although once in a while an Indian would top out on a ridge to look around the country.
This was a land of mirage, and even as a mirage would occasionally appear to let one see beyond the horizon, man himself could be revealed in the same way. If a man were accustomed to mirages, he could often detect a good deal from them. And none knew them better than the Indians who rode this wild land north of Mexico.
The Lopez peaks were off to the southeast, and I kept them there, using them as a guide to hold direction. Right ahead of me was a creek and when I reached it, I rode down into the bottom and stopped under some pecan trees, to listen.
There was no wind stirring beyond enough to move the leaves now and again. I could hear the rustle of water, for the creek was running better since the rains. Turning east, I rode along studying for tracks, but drawing up now and again to listen and look around. It was almighty quiet.
There were antelope and deer tracks, and some of javelinas, those wild boars that I'd not seen this far north and west before. They might have been there a long time, for this was new country to me.
There were some cow tracks and, sure enough, there was a big hoofprint, fairly recent, made by Ol' Brindle. I'd learned to distinguish his track from others. Somewhere those stolen cattle had been driven across this creek, of that I was sure. The rain might have wiped out other tracks, but where they went through the mud there'd still be tracks. It was likely that Danny Rolf had crossed along here somewhere, scouting for Lisa. And she herself had probably crossed, unless ... unless her direction had been a blind. And when I'd left her at the creek, she might have gone off to east or west.
West? Well ... maybe, but not likely. The further west a body rode, the wilder it grew. And the least water was toward the west. It was more open, too, for a good many miles toward the Pecos it was dry ... damned dry, in fact.
The odds said she
had gone east or south ... But what about Indians? And where, I thought suddenly, was Bert Harley's place?
The stage stop known as Ben Ficklin's must be forty miles off, at least. Harley's place was not likely to be more than ten miles from the Stirrup-Iron, so it should be somewhere along this creek, or in some draw leading to it. Well, that wasn't what I was looking for.
Suddenly, not fifty yards off ... Ol' Brindle.
He had his head up, watching me. His head high, thataway, I could have stood up straight under his horns, he was that big. He was in mighty good shape, too.
For a moment, we just sat there looking at him, that dun and me. Then I reined my horse away with a casual wave of the hand. "Take it easy, boy," I said, "nobody's huntin' you." And I rode wide around him, his eyes on me all the way. When I was pretty nigh past him he turned suddenly, watching me like a cat.
The creek ran silently along near the way I followed, and I wove in and out among the pecan trees, occasional walnuts and oak, with mesquite mostly farther back from the water.
Suddenly, maybe a half mile from where I'd seen Ol' Brindle, I pulled up.
Tracks of cattle, quite a bunch of them, crossed the creek at this point heading south. The tracks were several days old, and there were vague impressions of still earlier drives, almost wiped out by rain and time. Starting forward, the dun shied suddenly and I saw a rattler crossing the trail. He stopped, head up, looking at me with no favor. He was five feet long if he was an inch, and half as thick as my wrist.
"Stay out of my way," I said, "and I'll stay out of yours." I reined the dun around and waded the creek. The water was just over his hocks. Following the cow tracks, I worked my way through the mesquite and out on the flat.
There, on the edge of the plains country that lay ahead, I drew up. The Lopez peaks were still east and south. More closely due south was another peak that might be even higher. They called them mountains here, but in Colorado they wouldn't rank as such. Nonetheless, this was rugged country.
The peak that was almost due south must be a good twenty-five miles away, but there was some green that might be trees along a creek not more than five or six miles off. The trouble was, once out on the plain I'd be visible to any watcher ... There was low ground here and there, but not nearly as much as I wanted.
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