Gather My Horses

by John D. Nesbitt

  “It’s good you came out,” said Fielding. “I was getting ready to leave.”

  “Well, I can walk along with you as far as the road.”

  “I won’t complain.” Fielding looked at Roe, who had taken out his tobacco sack and was opening the drawstring. “Thanks for the talk,” said Fielding.

  “You bet. Be careful, now.”

  “I will.” Fielding turned the horse and fell in beside Isabel.

  After they had walked a few yards, she said, “I’m glad you stopped in today.”

  He made a smile. “I’m sorry if I’m not in a cheery mood.”

  “I heard some of it. Papa doesn’t want to have much to do with anything, does he?”

  “He and Bill Selby both. I guess I can’t blame them much.”

  “They seemed to appreciate your help when they needed it.”

  “I think they did. But other things have happened since then. Richard Lodge, and then this kid Mahoney. You heard about that?”

  Isabel nodded, and the shine of the sun moved on her dark hair. Her eyes had a pained expression and then relaxed.

  “I can’t say I’m very sorry,” Fielding went on. “He was the one who pushed Ed Bracken into the gunfight, and I’m pretty sure he got shot when he opened fire on me and killed my horse.”

  She put her hand on his arm as they continued walking. “No one can blame you for that.”

  “No, but they might want to get even. I think that’s part of why Selby and your father want to lie low.”

  “I’m glad you’re not like that.”

  “Thanks. It’s just not a pretty spot to be in.”

  “You’re your own man,” she said. “You stick up for yourself. Maybe someone else doesn’t like it, but it counts a lot with me.”

  “Thanks for that, too.”

  They walked to the end of the lane and turned to each other. Fielding cast a glance toward the yard and saw her father gazing in their direction. With his left hand, Fielding took off his hat and held it as a shield as he leaned forward to kiss her.

  As they parted he said, “So long for now. I’ll be thinking of you.”

  “Be careful. And I’ll be thinking of you, too.”

  He led the bay out a few steps, checked the rigging, and swung aboard. He turned in the saddle to wave, and he caught her smile.

  The glow stayed with him for a while, but the meetings with Roe and Selby came back to remind him of how things stood. He was on his own now. He had no one to blame. It was of his own making, and he had to face what would come. This whole feud had moved from push and shove to bullets and blood, and it wasn’t likely to go away by itself.

  Chapter Twelve

  The broad, bladelike part of the needle glinted in the morning sunlight as Fielding pushed the instrument through the canvas. Then he reached around, grasped the tip, and pulled the needle the rest of the way until the thread was tight. He looped the thread over the seam and poked the needle in place again. Tucking his elbow against his side, he moved his right hand so that the eye end of the needle rested in one of the steel pits in the buttonlike thimble, which was set in a leather strap that ran across his palm. He made sure the needle was straight, then pushed with the heel of his hand until the shiny tip broke through again.

  When Isabel had first given him the needle, he thought it might be large and dangerous for his purposes, but now that he was trying it out, he could see it was safer than the smaller one, which sometimes went off course and jabbed him in the finger as he held the fabric.

  He worked his way along the seam, repairing the rip in the sheet of canvas. From time to time, the blade of the needle flashed. Fielding imagined a sailmaker, sitting at a workbench in a sunny seaport town, working beneath a blue sky as white sails filled the harbor like so many leaves in an aspen grove. He pictured a bearded sailmaker in a knit cap, with barrels of flour and molasses stacked on the wharves in the background, as in a painting. On the ships in the harbor, sailors pulled on ropes, tied knots. Cowboys of the seas, he had heard them called, weathered men who sang songs as they spliced heavy ropes.

  Fielding did not know any seafaring songs except “Little Mohea” and “The Keyhole in the Door,” but he knew that many of the songs sung by cowpunchers were based on older versions that came across the ocean. Right now, a fragment of a rangeland song ran through his mind as he worked the stitch.

  “At the first break of morning

  I’ll rise with the day

  And gather my horses,

  The dun and the gray.”

  He did not remember where he had heard the song, or if he had heard it all the way through, but this much stayed with him.

  After he had finished his mending job and put the needle back in his hatband, he folded the canvas and took it to the gear tent. As he bent over the stack of folded manties, he heard the sound of horse hooves on hard dirt. Drawing his pistol, he went to the tent flap and looked out.

  A gray-bearded man, older than Roe or Selby and heavier than either of them, was poking along on a sorrel that Fielding recognized as one from the livery stable in town. He holstered his gun and stepped out into the open.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Come on in.”

  The older man rode a little farther, stopped the horse, and with some effort pushed up and over and then lowered himself to the ground. “Top of the mornin’ to you,” he said.

  “Anything I can help you with?” Fielding asked.

  “They told me in town you might need a hand.”

  Fielding noted the man’s sagging build and stained suspenders. “I might. How are you around horses?”

  The man’s left eye squinted at the outer corner, and muscles on his cheekbone twitched. “Been around ’em all my life.”

  “Well, that’s good. If someone sent you here, then you know what kind of work I do. I’m about to take a load of supplies up into the mountains for a line camp. You know these outfits run cattle up there on summer range.”

  “Oh, I know all about that. Good for the cattle. They get more shade, more water, better grass. Not so many bugs. Oh, yeah, I’ve been around.”

  “What kind of work have you been doin’?”

  The man spit to the side. “Plowin’ firebreaks for the railroad.”

  “Is that all done with?”

  “No, but if I’m goin’ to walk from here to Montana, back n’ forth a quarter of a mile at a time, I’d rather do it without a mule fartin’ in my face.”

  “Well, horses aren’t much different. You might not have to walk so much on this job, but there’s a lot more to it than sittin’ in the saddle.”

  “Oh, you tell me. I was puttin’ in fourteen hours a day in the saddle before you were born. Worked hard all my life. I’ve graded miles of road all by myself, built bridges since I was fifteen.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Fielding. “What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Nate. Last name of Freyer. Nate’s good enough.”

  “Fryer, huh? Last time I had one named Baker.”

  “Two cooks. Ha-ha!” The man opened his mouth and showed a row of yellow teeth.

  “Well, Nate, I’ll tell you what. I could use the help, and the company as well. But once we get out there, you pretty much have to stick with it. I expect to be gone for eight to ten days.”

  “Ah, hell, that don’t faze me none. When we was cuttin’ logs, we’d be out for a hundred, hundred and twenty days.”

  “That’s fine. What say we give it a try right away, see if things’ll work out?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about if you take that brown horse out of the corral and tie him up? You can brush him down, and I’ll give you the saddle and blankets. Once you saddle him and get the bridle on, you can take a couple of turns on him.”

  Nate’s left eye twitched, and his right eye opened wide. “He’s not a bronc, is he?”

  “Oh, no. This is the one I start my wranglers out on.”

  As Fielding stood by and watched, the ol
der man went to work. He seemed plenty familiar with the routine, and he talked a streak as he went through the tasks. The railroads were going to be the death of the free country, he said. They seemed like a blessing, made it possible to ship cattle to Omaha. But they cut up the country, and they brought out people who could never make it when things were tough. Brought out doors and windows and ice and pianos, so that men who didn’t want to work could sing in whorehouses. Brought out machinery to harvest grain, crush rocks. Mill your own lumber to build more towns. And the engines, they scared everything they didn’t kill on the tracks. No tellin’ how many times horses had spooked, then cut themselves on barbwire and bled to death. “That’s another thing they bring, barbwire.”

  “They sure do,” said Fielding.

  “That’s why I wanta go to the far-look country.”

  “There’s no rails where we’ll be goin’, that’s for sure.”

  “That’s the kind of country I like. You either pack it in, or it don’t git there.”

  “Uh-huh. Can you get three fingers in?”

  “You bet.” Nate put three fingers between the cinch and the horse’s body.

  “Here’s the bridle, then.”

  The horse would not open its mouth for the bit, so Fielding put on the bridle. He worked the bit into the mouth and drew the headstall over and behind the ears. After straightening the bridle, he handed the reins to the older man and said, “Let’s lead him out a ways, to be clear of everything, and check the cinch again.”

  Nate led the horse into the broad sunlight and stopped. He seemed to be stalling, as he pulled and picked at the cinches, shook the saddle horn, turned the stirrup this way and that, and led the horse forward a couple more paces. He draped the reins with quite a bit of slack and then had to try a couple of times to get his foot in the stirrup. With a whoosh of breath he grabbed the saddle front and back and began to pull himself up. When he had his weight over the saddle, he moved his right hand from the cantle to the horn, and with continued labor he swung his leg over and settled onto the saddle.

  Before he could catch the right stirrup, the brown horse started bucking. It pushed higher with the front quarters than the rear, and it did not seem as if it was trying to throw the rider as much as it was just being uncooperative.

  Nate pulled the slack in his reins and hollered, “Whoa! Whoa!”

  The horse continued raising its front feet, and Nate pulled back on the reins, so that the horse began to stumble backward as it rose in front. Just before it fell onto its left hip, the older man jumped free and staggered back. Fielding caught him. The reins had pulled out of Nate’s hand, so the brown horse fought its way back onto its feet. Fielding moved fast, jumped in front of it, and was able to grab the reins.

  “Son of a bitch,” said the older man. “Does he do that every time?”

  “Not that I’ve seen. And that’s the one the wrangler usually rides.”

  The eye twitched. “Well, I don’t know how much I want to ride him.”

  “I don’t know. We could put you on another one. But like I said, it’s a long ways out there and back.”

  The man raised his chin and looked over the length of the brown horse, then turned to glance at the livery stable horse. “I’m not married to any of this,” he said.

  “It’s not the best work for everyone,” Fielding offered.

  “I don’t think it is for me.” Nate pulled up the waist of his trousers. “How often do you go through help?”

  “Not countin’ you, I had three others since I started this season in May.”

  “Well, good luck with number four when you find him.”

  “Thanks. It probably won’t be on this trip. I’m supposed to pull out tomorrow.”

  As Nate and the livery horse rode away out of sight, Fielding pursed his lips. He was no worse off than he had been an hour earlier. He was still on his own.

  Fielding rested the horses on a level spot halfway up the switchbacks. The first part of this trip was the hardest, but none of it was easy. The trail ahead, as he remembered it, ran through the bottom of one rock-wall canyon and along the side of another canyon where there was no passage for horses or men in the bottom. On some of the high stretches, there wasn’t room to turn around a horse, and the mountainside fell away into dizzying space.

  He counted his horses again, out of habit. Seven was as many as he cared to handle by himself, especially in rough country. As for count, it was just as well he didn’t have another rider. He needed all seven of these to carry the salt and the camp provisions for the Half Moon as well his own camp and supplies. It took the equivalent of one and a half horses just to carry the grain for a trip like this.

  On up the switchback, he came out onto a stretch of trail that ran along the top of a ridge. Here he let three of the horses go on their own. The land broadened out on each side, with timber and deadfall on the right and boulders and grass on the left. Interspersed among the gray rock formations were live trees, mostly pine, with plenty of dead snags and fallen, twisted trunks. The air was fresh here, and he expected it to get chilly at night, so he was glad to see the firewood.

  That evening he let the horses graze until nightfall and then tied them up for the night. The wind in the pines sounded like rushing water, and the creaking of trees blended with the shuffle of horse hooves as he rolled out his bed. The night was dark, and the rest of the world seemed far away. At times like this he felt at home in the spareness of what they called the high lonesome.

  With daylight he was back to work and business. He knew the way ahead was going to get narrow as it went down and through a canyon with close walls. He tied all seven horses in a line and hit the trail.

  The sun was straight overhead when he hit the bottom of the canyon. The trail ran alongside a clear creek, so he took the time to untie the horses and let them drink. Their hooves clattered on the smooth rocks, and the packs rubbed as the horses pushed their way to the water. A light, sucking sound came from the horses drinking. Tails swished. A faint hum of gnats carried on the air when motion ceased. Fielding ate a cold biscuit and a handful of raisins, then drank from his canteen and went upstream to fill it. He splashed water on his face. A few minutes later, he got the horses in line again and led them out.

  The path ran level for half a mile and then began to climb. For a while, the trail had crossed and recrossed the creek a few times, but now the creek stayed on the left. Large boulders rose on the right wherever the canyon wall sat back. The sky above was a swath of blue where hawks and eagles floated in and out of view. The afternoon was warm, and Fielding began to drowse.

  He came alert when the horse stopped beneath him. A large man on a tall horse blocked the way in front. The rider and horse seemed taller than they were because of the rise in the trail, but Fielding had them both placed. The man wore a gray hat and black vest, and the sorrel wore a brand of interlocking diamonds. The sight of them gave rise to a feeling of dislike.

  “You get around a lot for a sack jig, don’t you?” said Fielding.

  The sorrel shifted position, and Foote’s sidearm came into view. “Who’s to say?” asked the man.

  “Don’t push yourself too far,” answered Fielding. “I’ve got work to do, and you’re blocking my way.”

  “Do you own it?”

  “I think we went through this before, but I don’t expect you to understand things very fast.”

  “If you’re so smart, why don’t you try to make me move?”

  “Because you might make a bad choice and hurt yourself with that hog leg.”

  “If you think I don’t—”

  “And besides,” Fielding cut in, “I want to give you a chance to make good on your threat of the other day.”

  Foote’s eyes opened. “What was that?”

  “You said anytime, you and me. I believe you said, ‘Fists is my favorite way.’ How about it?”

  “Here?” Foote’s eyes darted to both sides of the trail.

  “Not here. Th
ere’s no room. Turn around, and we’ll go up to a wide spot.”

  “And let you shoot me in the back?”

  “Don’t be a fool. Why would I want to do that, when I can punch you in the face?” Fielding did not add that he assumed Pence was somewhere not far away, and a gunshot would bring him on the double.

  “By God, I’m gonna love rubbin’ your face in the dirt.”

  “Let’s see if you can do it.”

  Foote took the bait and turned his horse around. He set out on a lope. Fielding didn’t blame the man for not wanting to leave his back exposed for any longer than he had to, and he might also be following the old rule of being the first to get to the place where they were going to fight.

  Fielding rode on, his nervousness building, until he came to a spot on the right side of the trail where Foote had dismounted. The big man had his horse tied to a three-inch pine trunk and had hung his hat, vest, and gun belt on the saddle horn. Fielding came down off his horse and tied it to a tree, then tied the pack string to another. As he hung his hat and his gun belt on his saddle horn, he thought he might have one advantage. He knew he had to come out of this fight intact, and he was going to put everything he had into it. In contrast, he thought Foote was looking for an opportunity to beat up or even cripple his rival, but Fielding did not think the man was committed to the whole Argyle plan, if he even knew of it.

  The galoot, as Adler called him, came forward with his fists up. He had his head lifted, and his front teeth showed in the sneering smile he wore. Fielding raised his own fists and came within five feet of his opponent. Each man began to circle to the left. Fielding had the impression that Foote was not as nimble in heeled riding boots as he would like, and he stumbled on a raised root from a pine tree.

  Fielding leaned forward and put some spring in his step. He danced in, threw a jab that didn’t land, and bounced out. He tried the move a second time, caught the man flat-footed, and came right back in with a punch that landed. Foote came around and squared off, then lunged forward with a left that grazed Fielding’s cheekbone. Fielding skipped out of range, bounced to his right, came back to his left, sprang in with a jab, and stepped back out. Foote was taking slow, heavy steps as he followed.