by John Shirley
That got a good laugh, even from Vinder.
“Pug,” Mase said in a quiet aside, “how has Jimson been doing?”
“Denver’s holding up his end just fine. ’Course, he’s slower than some of the men working with the cattle. Doesn’t know much about roping. But he’s got sand, Mase.”
“You saw him show sand yourself?”
“Well . . .” Pug lowered his voice, glancing at the other men, who were laughing at some story Ray was telling. Something about a prairie dog so big you could ride it. “I was working on Jeff Bolton’s spread. Denver heard that Joe Fletcher and Kell Tremaine had signed on to the Whiskey Creek Ranch, that they was going to try to move the WCR herd onto Bolton land. Being as he was a friend of my brother’s, he asked if we needed a hand. We were outgunned by those Whiskey Creek boys, so we said okay, and Denver came in just as Fletcher and Tremaine and four others was raiding our line camp. They pulled over our wagon, tossed some torches at us—and then Tremaine shot Danny Wells right out of the saddle. I was mad as a wet hen, and I come at Tremaine, and he shot me and wounded me pretty good. He was about to finish it, and Denver shot it out with Tremaine, killed him, and scared off those others. Then he bandaged me up and took me to the doc. Hell, he didn’t even get paid for any of that. . . .”
Mase nodded. “So he mixed in out of friendship?”
“That’s how it was.”
“Sounds like a good man to have around.”
“I won’t say he’s never been in trouble. He has. But he’s a decent man, Mase.”
That made Mase think of his brother, Hiram. I won’t say he’s never been in trouble. . . .
Was Hiram a decent man? Mase thought he was deep down. But who knew where his trail had led him over the last five years? Hiram had always cast a wide loop. He could be in a territorial prison now, for all Mase knew.
Harry Duff, sitting by the fire, was using a small knife to carve a figurine from a piece of pine wood and whistling to himself under his breath.
“What you carving there, Duff?” Mase asked.
The cowboy held it up: an image of a Chickasaw warrior. The head was the most detailed part, and Mase recognized Cloudy Moon. “Why you’ve even got his scarred eye on there! Where’d you learn to carve like that?”
“Oh, I reckon I learned some from my pa but mostly by wasting a lot of wood on my own.”
“You said you’d only been eighty-five miles from your home till you come with us, Duff,” Pug said. “You’re farther than that now. Seen anything new to you?”
Duff nodded. “Never been so up close with a passel of Indian warriors before. Not so many left down round our place. And that Red River floodwater—never saw nothing like that. Saw a locomotive, too. Seen ’em in pictures, never myself.”
“You’ll see the elephant sure enough when we get to Wichita,” said Pug.
“This business of seeing elephants puzzles me,” said Dollager as he brought the tin plates for the first dinner call. “I am quite sure there are none on this continent.”
“It’s a way of speaking,” said Mase. “Means a man has a chance to see something new—see what there is to see. But there are a couple of real elephants in this nation. A fella I knew saw ’em at P. T. Barnum’s circus up in Chicago. Never saw one myself.”
“I’ve not only seen elephants,” said Dollager, ladling stew onto a plate. “I was nearly trampled to death by one!”
“Listen to him!” Lorenzo said, shaking his head and laughing. “He is as bad as Ray!”
“I neither engage in mendacity nor hyperbole, gentlemen!” Dollager declared, handing a plate of stew and biscuits to Pug. “It was in India in the jungle out west of Calcutta, and a herd of wild elephants came at the file of Her Majesty’s soldiers with which I served! Each one was big enough to step on one of your longhorn cattle, and wipe it off its foot! We were in the jungle there seeking the rebel camp, and the rogues used torches to drive the herd directly toward our column! I managed to get my wagon, but it was badly jostled by an elephant and I was thrown to the ground—whereupon a great bull, the biggest I’d ever seen, came right at me in raging fury, making the very ground shake in its thunderous charge!”
Mase was amused to see the cowboys silent and rapt as they listened, wide-eyed, to the story.
“As I rose to my feet,” Dollager went on, waving his ladle in the air, “the bull came straight for me, trumpeting madly, its eyes blazing red as it lowered its head to thrust its tusks at my brisket! Gentlemen, I never moved so fast as I did that day! I outstripped the fastest sprinter of the fastest footrace! I bolted off the trail and dove under my wagon!” He shook his head and ladled up a plateful of stew. “But not before the bull came so close with those tusks that he took one of the tails of my coat with him as he passed, tearing my coat from my back and carrying it away with him!”
* * *
* * *
The first gunshot brought Mase instantly out of his bedroll. By the time he got his boots on, he was wide-awake and reaching for his rifle.
He could hear Pug shouting orders and the pounding hooves of running cattle. He ran to his horse—seeing Rufus and Denver doing the same—and regretted not having a horse saddled already. As fast as he could, Mase slung a saddle on, buckled it, stuck the rifle in its rig holster, and jumped aboard, kicking the stallion into action.
He could see the starlight glistening off the horns of the cattle as the herd milled and bawled, many on the south end stampeding away. A muzzle flash showed from down that way: a gunshot. Was that one of his men trying to drive the cattle back into the herd? Or someone trying to split up the herd? Another muzzle flash showed in the same spot, and an unfamiliar voice warbled a Rebel yell. Rustlers breaking off part of the herd, heading it south!
Mase considered firing his rifle toward that muzzle flash; he might hit a rustler, but firing in that direction he’d only add to the fear and confusion in the cattle, driving more of them away from the main herd.
He could see the silhouettes of his own men over to the northwest, trying to control the herd.
Mase skirted the herd toward the south, shouting at the cattle, snapping a rope to head off steers beginning a run. He heard another crack of gunfire—and felt a sting as his right hip was grazed by a bullet. But the sensation, and the sound of the bullet, told him it had come from the northwest. Wasn’t that where his own men were?
A mass of cattle was breaking from the herd, moving off to the southwest, lost in the darkness. If the Durst Ranch riders set off after them, they’d lose control of the greater mass of the spooked herd. Pug would be closing that part of the herd off from the south, cutting their losses till the herd was under control and daylight would give them a chance to bring the runaway beeves back. And maybe confront the rustlers.
Mase heard Pug’s voice shouting at the cattle, and he rode that way, along the lower edge of the remaining herd. “Pug!” he called.
“Over here, Mase!”
Mase spotted Pug, lasso in hand, riding his way.
“You get a look at those men?” Mase asked, riding up to Pug. “Indians?”
“Not Indians. I saw that much. Didn’t see any faces. Look out!” He drew his gun and fired in the air, seeing Ol’ Buck coming his way. “Get back, damn you, Buck! Go on!”
The steer skidded to a halt, tossed his horned head in confusion, then turned and trotted back to the main herd.
“Pug, did you boys fire shots? Or just the rustlers?”
“I fired a couple. Vinder and Rufus fired, too—heading off some bunch quitters.”
“Anyone shoot at the rustlers?”
“Not that I saw. I fired in the air.”
“Everyone should’ve been firing in the air or at the ground. But someone over there, where you men were, fired toward me—skinned my hip!”
“How bad you hit?”
Mas
e touched the spot, found a bit of fabric had been shot away on his pants, but felt no blood. “Just a graze. No blood.”
“Hell, a few inches difference and they could’ve gut-shot you!”
“I was thinking that, too. Hee-yaw, longhorns, get on home!”
But maybe they were firing at the rustlers, Mase thought, and their aim was wild. Still—someone had been stupid, unless they were trying to hit him.
Even if he’d made some drover angry along the way, why would anyone try to kill the man who’d be paying them? Made no sense . . .
* * *
* * *
After three hours in the saddle, herding till just after the dawn lit the basin with blue-gray light, Mase decided the cattle were calmed down enough and stabilized in one place. He rode up the line, picking out half the drovers to head for a quick breakfast. He’d get that shift fed, then put them back on the herd while the others ate. Once the breakfasts were done, he’d pick out riders to bring back the beeves that had been run off. A little more than four hundred missing cattle had to be rounded up. That would require more than a couple men.
And he would be going with them, Mase figured, as he rode into camp to get his own bacon, biscuits, and coffee. It’d take time and men to locate the runaway cattle and a good deal more to get them back here, and there might well be a fight. He’d take Jimson along, too, since Pug made him out to be a gunhand.
It was an hour more before they were ready to head out. The sun had risen well over the horizon and clouds were blowing in from the north, bringing a faint mist that wasn’t quite rain, when Mase, Dorge, Jimson, Jost, Lorenzo, and Duff rode out to the south. Rufus and East Wind seemed disappointed they hadn’t been invited along, but Mase didn’t want to risk the youngest riders here, both of them pretty much just kids, on a mission that might involve a gunfight.
The gathering team rode out six abreast, every one of them wearing a gun belt as they followed the tracks of the runaways. Cattle being herd animals, they had mostly stuck together, and the tracks showed them heading south and east. On the way here up to the Red Trail canyon, Mase had seen a draw down that way that led into a canyon. Looking through his spyglass, he had glimpsed water back in that canyon. Maybe a spring. The cattle might be following their noses to the water.
Up ahead, the ground rose to a low ridge covered with grass, little more than a thirty-foot-high ripple in the prairie, and Mase said, “Hold on a second!”
As the others reined in, he tugged out his rifle and spurred up to the top of the rise, rifle propped on his hip, to get a quick gander at whatever was on the other side. He didn’t want to lead his drovers into an ambush.
About two hundred yards ahead, down the shallow slope, four men were riding toward him in a tight group. They looked like rough characters to Mase, but they might have been from some local ranch.
They saw him at the same time and slowed their horses.
Mase backed his horse down the slope till the strangers couldn’t see him, and called to Jimson. “Denver! I need you to post yourself over to the right. You saw that brush down there? Use that for cover. You’re going to flank some men when I call you. Don’t kill ’em unless you have to. But get their attention.”
Denver touched his hat in acknowledgment and rode off to the right, under cover of the rise.
Mase rode up the slope, a little below where he was before, and stopped just high enough to see over the top of the rise. The four men were sitting on their horses, just waiting. Two of them had rifles in their hands, but they didn’t seem ready to bring them into action. Mase urged his horse up to the top of the hill and said, “You other men come up behind me and then stay on top of the ridge. Hands on weapons but don’t jump the gun.”
He heard their mounts moving up behind him as he rode over the low ridge and down into the lowland area. Mase’s Winchester was ready to fire, a round in the chamber. He stopped at the bottom of the rise and shouted, “You men want to parley, come on over here.”
The four men rode slowly forward till their horses were about thirty feet from Mase’s stallion. The man on the right was a chunky, greasy-looking fellow in buckskin. On the left were two men wearing black frock coats. One of them had a high-crowned hat; his eyes were close together, his teeth crooked. The other, without a hat, had pitted skin, smallpox marks, and his hair greased back.
The man in the middle had an air of authority, the look of being in charge. Clean-shaven, he wore a long blue coat, a white shirt and vest, a string tie, and a low-crowned black hat. A townsman’s look. Yet there was an arrogance in the way he held himself that suggested he was a man who made his own law. He had a light, pleasant smile, but his eyes were hard as flint.
“You men lose some cattle?” he asked, his voice mild as if just curious.
“That’s right,” said Mase. “Someone raided us, drove a piece of our herd down south here. We’ll be taking them back come hell or high water.”
“It happens we saw something over four hundred cows stampede through here this morning,” the man said, shifting in his saddle. “We had nothing to do with any raid. But we know just where those cattle run to. It’s off a piece to the south. A man has to know the way. And we do.”
“You’re saying you’re not the rustlers?”
“We are not! But we saw ’em. Chickasaw, I reckon. When they saw us coming, they run off. Now, it’s a long way from here to there. But if you are willing to pay us five dollars a head, we’ll take you there.”
“Five dollars! That adds up to around two thousand dollars. That’ll come up to about five hundred dollars for each of you four men. Not bad! What makes you think I’ve got that kind of money with this drive?”
“Just a guess. If you don’t, you can buy as many back as you can afford from us.”
Mase almost laughed aloud at the man’s nerviness. “And the rest fall to you?”
The rustler shrugged. “We found ’em, didn’t we?”
“What’s your name, mister?”
“It’s Samuel Clarke.”
“I surely doubt that. My name is Mase Durst. And that at least is true. You see those men on the ridge above me? They’re all good shots. Here’s my offer: you drop your weapons and lead us to our cattle, and we won’t have to kill you for rustling our beeves. I’ll give your description to the US marshal and let it go at that.”
The chunky man in the buckskin jacket and floppy hat snarled, “Damn it, let’s just take them cows and sell the whole bunch! This is a lot of foolishness.”
“Shut up, Sawney!” the rustler boss snapped, glancing over at the speaker. Then the man who called himself Clarke turned to Mase. “Don’t care for your deal. You pay up, and we’ll find those cattle for you. We can shoot, too, mister. You don’t want to lose any of your men, do you? But hell, you’d probably catch the first bullet.”
“Denver!” Mase shouted.
Denver rode out of the brush to the right, his pistol in his hand, and shouted, “Joe Fletcher!”
Startled, the man in the long blue coat turned to stare at Denver. “Jimson!”
“I’ve got the drop on you there, Joe! And those men on the ridge are aiming at you other boys!”
The rustlers looked up to see that the drovers on the low ridge had their guns trained on them.
“It’s been a while, Denver,” Fletcher said.
“Put your hands up, or I’ll kill you, Joe! You know I won’t miss!”
Fletcher hesitated. Then the man he’d called Sawney growled to himself and pulled out a big Dragoon revolver, swung it toward Denver—even as Mase dropped the muzzle of his rifle and fired. At thirty feet he easily hit Sawney, the bullet cracking into the man’s chest so he jerked back in the saddle, firing his pistol spasmodically. The Dragoon’s bullet hit the ground, and Sawney’s horse ran off, its rider slumped over its neck.
“Fletcher—drop it!” Denve
r yelled. “Last warning!”
Fletcher dropped his pistol and put his hands up.
“Now, you other men, throw down those weapons!” Mase shouted, swinging his rifle at the other two rustlers. They looked at each other—in that moment, Mase guessed that they were brothers—and dropped their pistols in the grass.
“Ray,” he called out, “see if you can catch that horse that run off, will you? See if that man’s dead.”
* * *
* * *
Mase was sitting by the fire that evening, listening to his men talk and holding the map Crane had given him up to the light to peer at it yet again. There wasn’t much to it. Just a man’s hen scratchings barely making sense. But it did look like there was water partway up the trail. He would have the same hands clearing some more of the canyon trail tomorrow morning at first light as the other men moved the herd up to where it was already cleared. The chuck wagon would go first. . . .
He remembered Ray’s worry that the rustlers might be waiting for him somewhere up the trail. He glanced up at the cliff tops. He saw nothing but a vulture circling up there.
Suddenly he had a sharp mental image of the rustler Sawney rocking back in his saddle under the impact of the Winchester’s bullet. It bothered Mase . . . that the killing didn’t bother him. Not much, anyhow. Sawney had without a doubt been planning to kill him or Denver—Mase had acted instinctively. But shouldn’t he be feeling some remorse for killing a man?
No. He was all in on this drive. That meant fighting to the death to defend it. Mase realized that if so much wasn’t riding on this drive, he might not have been so quick to kill. He had sunk pretty much everything into this cattle drive. The Durst Ranch was in debt to the bank, too. He had to make good—for Katie and Jim as well as for himself. It was Wichita or bust. He felt the burden of it every waking minute—just as he felt the weight of his responsibility for the lives of his drovers. All that pressure had concentrated in his hand to squeeze the trigger of his Winchester. . . .