by John Shirley
This impressed Mase as the biggest speech he’d yet heard from Jacob. What mattered was Jacob was a hard, efficient worker. “Crane talked you up, and he was right. You’re a good hand.”
“I thank you, sir. And I thank you for something else, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Paying me the same as them other boys. Usually I get half what a white man gets.”
“If you worked half as hard as you do, you’d get half as much!” Mase said, grinning. “But that goes for every man in the outfit.”
Jacob smiled. Then his smile was quickly erased as he stared off into darkness to the west. “You see that, Mr. Durst?”
“What is it?”
“I swear I saw a man afoot, or a boy mebbe—see that patch of brush out there?” He pointed. “Saw it move in there. Coming at the herd. Could’ve been a wolf fooling my eyes. It was on the east side of that brush.”
“We don’t want wolves nor men prowling here. Let’s have a look.”
Driven by the rising storm wind, the clouds cracked open, and the moonlight shone through as they trotted their horses quietly up to the west side of the brush. Going slowly to minimize noise, they moved along the brush line, peering into the shadows.
“There, sir!” Jacob whispered, pointing.
Mase saw it then, about sixty feet away: one of the shadows taking on the shape of a slim man moving out of the brush a few yards from a group of cattle. The shape firmed up in the moonlight, creeping in a squat toward the herd, rope in hand. It was a figure in buckskin with an unmistakable profile. An Indian.
Taking up his lasso, Mase coiled its loop for a cast. He dared not shoot at the man; the shot could scatter the herd.
“Jacob,” Mase whispered, “head quiet as you can back behind the brush, circle him to the south. I’ll take him from the north.”
Jacob nodded and turned his horse, trotting off so as not to make much noise. The wind was picking up, the storm clouds rushing now, looming over them. Lightning flared not far off; thunder rumbled.
Mase secured the lasso with a half hitch around the saddle horn and nudged his horse with his knees so it moved quietly ahead.
The Indian had picked out a yearling, was already whirling a loop to throw over the steer’s head. Mase wondered how the rustler hoped to control the beast after roping it, seeing as he was on foot.
The rustler threw his loop—and at the same moment, Mase cast his own. It settled over the Indian’s head, shoulders, and arms, all the way to the elbows, and Mase tugged it tight as he backed up his horse, dragging the man off his feet. The rustler lost his grip on the yearling, which ran off, dragging the rope, as Jacob rode up, jumped off his mule, and flipped the thief over on his belly. He pressed a knee on the struggling rustler to hold him.
Mase untied the lasso from his saddle horn, jumped down, drew his knife, and cut a yard of rope off. He hurried over and, after a short struggle, tied the rustler’s arms behind his back.
“Turn him over,” Mase said. The clouds parted, and he and the Indian regarded each other in the moonlight. “Why, he’s but a boy!” Mase exclaimed.
The Indian boy might be at most fifteen. He was starveling skinny, his belly sunken toward his backbone. But his onyx eyes glared back at Mase with flinty defiance. Thunder rumbled in the distance, getting closer.
“Where are the others, boy?” Mase asked.
He got no response. The Indian teen only clamped his mouth more tightly shut.
“Could be there ain’t no others,” Jacob suggested.
“His band’s got to be somewhere around here.”
“Haven’t seen no others. Nor their sign. I don’t see any horse in that thicket either. Look at his feet—all tore up. No moccasins, nothing. No knife on him.”
Mase nodded. While the Apaches and the Comanches in the area might at times be a little hard up for food, he’d never before seen one quite this starved or poorly equipped. He looked him over, and it seemed to Mase the buckskin garments were more Plains Indian than Texas.
“If he’s Apache, I don’t see the signs of it.”
“Ain’t Apache!” the boy hissed, spitting the word as if he hated Apaches.
“You speak English, boy?” Mase asked.
“What if I do?”
“Where’d you learn it?” Most of the Indians in the area spoke but a pidgin English, mixed with Spanish and Natchez.
“You untie me. Then maybe I tell you!”
Mase snorted. “Not likely.”
“What we do with him?” Jacob asked. “Hang him?”
Mase shook his head. “Have to take him prisoner, I expect. Maybe give him to the Army up the trail, let them decide. Or turn him over to his band if we can find ’em. Take hold of his wrists. I’ll pull him up.”
He dragged the Indian to his feet—and the boy instantly tried to run. Jacob yanked him back. “You’ll do yourself a mischief, boy!”
Lightning flashed a few miles away, and thunder growled. The cattle lowed, most of them up now, milling restlessly.
“You got a horse or a mule, boy?” Mase asked. “I’ll get it and put you on it, if you do. Otherwise you’ll ride with a lot less dignity.”
The boy angrily shook his head and looked away.
“I didn’t see no stock tracks in that brush when I rode around it,” Jacob said.
The rain was coming thicker now, lashed down by the fiercer wind.
“Throw him over your cantle, ride him into camp,” Mase said. “Untie him under guard, tell the coosie to feed him.”
“Feed him, sir?” Used to more hard-bitten trail bosses, Jacob seemed genuinely surprised.
“That’s right. Tell Dollager to keep a shotgun on the boy while he eats. We’ll tie him up when he’s done. You send Vasquez, Jost, and Pug out here—Duff is to saddle up between the camp and the herd.” He looked at the angry sky. “Get a wiggle on!”
“Yes, sir!”
Jacob lifted the boy as if he were but a sack of grain, carried him to his horse, and dumped him over the cantle. In a moment Jacob was in the saddle; one hand holding the boy down, the other on the reins, he galloped off toward camp.
Mase retrieved his lasso, mounted up, and set about skirting the herd, calling out to the cattle, heading off their nervous shying, and looking for Ol’ Buck. If the herd threatened to scatter in the storm, maybe he could get Buck to lead them back.
The wind rose still more; lightning cracked nearer, and he had to gallop to intercept a big steer running away from the storm; it had been leading a dozen others off to the south.
Mase succeeded in turning them and saw Vasquez and the others riding hard around the herd, trying to keep it roughly in place.
Half an hour of fevered riding passed as they fought to keep the cattle contained, before Mase spotted Ol’ Buck pounding to the south, with a bawling, frantic line of perhaps a hundred steers following after.
Mase drew his pistol, rode to intercept the lead steer, and fired in the air to get Ol’ Buck’s attention. Buck half stumbled, confused, then turned and the others followed as Mase kept riding, firing once more to drive Buck back toward the herd.
In a flash of moonlight, Mase saw the Indian boy, somehow astride Jacob’s mule. The Indian was about forty yards away, reined in and watching. “What the devil!” Mase muttered.
A moment later lightning struck just to the west of the herd. He smelled ozone, and electricity sizzled blue across the wet ground; he glimpsed sparks arcing between the horns of a steer, the maddened longhorn rushing directly at him: head lowered, nostrils smoking, the whites showing around its eyes, hooves pounding.
Mase turned his horse, but it was too late; the horse screamed, deeply gored by the onrushing steer. It sunfished and fell, and Mase just managed to jump free before it could fall on his leg. He struck the ground hard, the air knocked out of him
, and struggled to get up, seeing the stampede come right at him.
He got up, gasping, and turned to run but knew it was too late—then a horse was suddenly there, right in front of him. It was one of the remuda horses, unsaddled but harnessed—and it was led by the Indian boy on the mule.
“Get on!” the boy shouted.
Mase clapped onto the horse’s rump and leapfrogged on as the steers rushed up to them, one of them trampling the spot he’d been in a moment before. The remuda pony galloped in panic with the steers, Mase with his arms wrapped around its neck. He caught a chaotic look at the Indian boy riding off on the mule. Cattle streamed by on every side.
Then he was in the clear, grabbing the horse’s mane, digging his heels in its ribs, shouting, “Whoa!” It was a full minute before he was able to get the panting animal to stop.
Mase turned to see the Indian boy at the mouth of an arroyo. The boy who’d saved his life. The young Indian paused and looked back at him—Mase raised a hand in salutation. The boy raised his hand and then rode into the arroyo, passing from sight.
CHAPTER FIVE
The storm broke up quickly, but it took Mase and his men the rest of the night and some of the morning, riding through mud and sporadic rain, to gather up the strays. About four hundred fifty head had scattered past the drovers into the surrounding arroyos and plains. Four of the horses had run off, too. Those they located fairly quickly, as they were tame enough to stick closer, but the cattle were hiding from the storm in gullies and brush brakes.
So exhausted they could barely sit their saddles, Mase and Pug drove the last of the strays back into the herd, then returned to camp, finding the others there already eating breakfast. Dollager had pulled enough dry wood from storage in the canvas “possum belly” under the wagon to get the campfire going. The sky was clear now, and the sun was just warm enough to be welcome. Every drover had red eyes, and they were all glumly silent as they ate, but no one spoke a word of complaint. Mase knew that if they’d had enough hands, they’d have gotten the gather finished twice as quick. But he wasn’t one to lash himself with regret.
He took a plate of food and sat on a log beside Jacob. Dollager brought him a cup of coffee.
“Sorry about your mule, Jacob,” Mase said after a long pull at the coffee.
Jacob was silent for a while, then said at last, “I reckon she’s still alive anyhow. I don’t expect the Indian killed her for food, being as he got his feed.”
“His tracks probably washed out after that storm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you’ve got a remuda horse, though we lost one. I suppose we should take some meat from that dead horse. I was never one for horsemeat, though.” He ate some sourdough biscuit and bacon. Hungry as he was, he thought he’d never tasted better fare.
He looked out at the herd, saw some of them peacefully cropping grass, many others lying with legs folded, comfortably dozing. The night had worn the cattle out, too. “Dollager, you get some rest last night?” he asked.
“More than you did, Mr. Durst. Of that, I’m sure,” Dollager said, walking up with a warm pan in his hand. “Jacob—I must confess I took my eyes off that Indian for a moment, and he ran away with your mule. I do apologize.”
“It’s all right, Mick,” said Jacob. “I’ll get ’er back.”
Dollager held the pan out to Mase. “I’ve made some fritters from the dried apples and blackstrap, if you fellows would like some.”
“I could eat the apple tree, bark and all,” said Mase as Dollager spooned the fritters from the pan onto their plates. “Being as you slept some, coosie, hows about you just sit on a horse for us for a little while and watch the herd from over here? Those cows are as tired as we are. I doubt they go anywhere. I’m gonna catch a couple hours’ sleep. You others do the same. Then I’ll get up and take Dollager’s place. Just roust us if there’s any trouble, coosie—or if you see any Indians at all.”
“Very good, Mr. Durst.”
Mase finished his meal and went for a lie-down. It was four hours before he woke—he checked by his railroad watch—and he sat up annoyed. “Why’d no one wake me?”
Dollager looked up from a griddle, where he was frying the next meal. “Pug said to let you sleep, sir. He and Vasquez and Jost are keeping an eye on things. The boy Duff there is yet asleep. I’ve got Jacob off looking for dry wood.”
Mase stood up and stretched—and then went stock-still, staring out at the plains. There, on a low hill a hundred yards away, was the Indian boy sitting on Jacob’s mule. Just watching them.
“There’s that boy, coosie! See him? You find out anything when you fed him?”
“He said his name’s East Wind Blake. He’s a Sioux. He revealed nothing else I’m afraid, sir. Not a loquacious lad.”
“A Sioux! He’s a long way from home. And there he is, watching us.”
“Are you going to take a shot at him, Mr. Durst?” Dollager asked, peering at the boy. He sounded a little worried. “So as to get the mule back?”
“That boy saved my life last night. I will not be shooting at him.”
“The men know he pulled your chestnuts from the fire,” Dollager said. “Pug saw it happen. I expect that’s why they’re reluctant to go after him, despite the larceny.”
“We’ll just see. I might have to buy Jacob a mule.”
As he watched, the boy turned the mule, rode her over the hilltop, and vanished from sight.
* * *
* * *
Katie was pitchforking hay in the barn on an overcast Saturday afternoon when she heard swift hoofbeats approaching. She looked up to see Jim ride his pony into the barn. His face was flushed with excitement, his eyes wide.
“What’re you doing here?” she demanded. “You’re supposed to be helping Curly and Hector fix the fence!”
“Curly sent me to get you! And he sent Hector to get his gun! There’s three men saying they want to pull down our fences!”
“What men?”
“They’re from Circle H! They put rope on the fence, and Curly cut it with a knife and now he’s waving that knife at ’em!”
“What! Did he ask them what they were about?”
“Yes, ma’am. He sent me here, and he was talking to them a whole lot when I left.”
He’s trying to stall them, she thought.
She leaned the pitchfork against the wall and went to get her saddle. “I’ll saddle Bonnie. You can take me to the spot. Water that pony some and rest him while I’m saddling up. You’ve got him blowing from the gallop. It’s the Lord’s mercy you didn’t fall off and break your neck. . . .”
A hard ride brought Katie and Jim to the northeast corner of the property, where it abutted the Circle H’s north pastures. Curly and Hector were watching helplessly as two men finished attaching heavy ropes to a fifty-foot-wide section of wooden fence. Andy Pike sat on his horse, with a shotgun laid across the cantle, watching Curly and Hector. Curly now had his repeating rifle in hand.
The other Circle H hands she knew by sight: Red Sullivan, a sunburned face to go with his ginger hair and mustache, and Wurreck, a small, tense man with a thick black beard.
Beyond the hands, on Circle H land, about two hundred cattle were grazing. Katie suspected they’d been brought here as part of this show of force.
“Curly—you threatened those men with a knife?” she asked, walking over to him.
“They said they were going to pull the fence down, senora! I had nothing else to stop them with! Estúpido! I should have brought a rifle! Hector, he bring it to me, and I try to talk to them—”
“It’s okay, Curly. Nobody expected this foolishness.”
“I didn’t want to shoot without asking you.”
Katie nodded as she took her rifle from its saddle holster. “You did right.”
“Mama,” Jim whispered, “what do w
e do?”
“I’m going to find out.” She smiled at Jim, sorry she’d let him come out here with her. “You wait here with Curly.”
Fingers tightening on the rifle, she walked down the fence a little till she was opposite Andy Pike. He sat on his horse, watching her, about ten yards away. Katie was a fair shot—her parents had taught her how to use a rifle and a shotgun—but this was no time to open a gunfight.
The men at the fence had paused in their work. They looked uncomfortable, staring at her, as if it had just now occurred to them that they might have to fight a woman.
Pike spoke, low and drawling. “You boys going to pull that fence down or not?”
Sullivan and Wurreck went back to tightening the knots. Their horses waited behind them, the other ends of the ropes attached to their saddle horns.
“Someone going to tell me what this is all about?” Katie demanded. She looked at Pike. “How about you, Andy Pike? Anything to say?”
Pike cleared his throat. “Ma’am, Mr. Harning says you’ve built a fence across his property.”
“Now, how can he do that? It isn’t his property! It’s Durst land!”
“Well, he says it’s his, and the court will prove it! Says to tell you he’ll pay you something anyhow, if—”
“The hell you say!” she interrupted, shouting the words. She put the rifle to her shoulder and centered it on Pike. “Back ’em off!” She had the drop on him. But she’d never killed a man. She wasn’t sure she was ready to do it—or if she’d be arrested for it even if she was ready.
Pike eyed the rifle. Then he shrugged. She could see in his eyes he was going to call her bluff. “I don’t think you’ll shoot me, Mrs. Durst,” he said. “I can’t see you wanting to go to prison.”
She had to make some kind of move. Suppose it brought on a general gunfight? What about Jim and Hector?
“Jim!” she called. “Head on back to the house!”