Red Trail

by John Shirley

  Mase climbed wearily into the saddle, then rode along the river for a few minutes, trying to figure out if its level was falling. It didn’t seem so. And he noted gathering storm clouds to the northeast. They might be in for another deluge.

  He rode out to the herd where Rufus was skirting it, absently whirling the end of a rope, though the cattle were settled down. He seemed to be nodding in the saddle as if he might fall asleep. A cowboy asleep in the saddle after a long day was no strange sight.

  “Rufus!” Mase called, riding up.

  The boy looked around, startled. “Mr. Durst!”

  “Don’t look so surprised, boy. You go on in and hit the bedroll.”

  “No, sir—I mean, if you don’t mind, I’ll give you a hand. I still got part of my watch to go.”

  Mase smiled. “You looked to me like you were going to fall on the ground, snoring. But suit yourself. When you do go in, get your slicker out. Might rain again.”

  Rufus looked doubtfully at the sky. There were a moon and some darkly scudding clouds and a wash of stars. “Don’t see any rain, boss.”

  “Coming from the northeast. Let’s drift around the herd, see what needs doing.”

  Mase led the way to the south, riding at a walk along the outer fringes of the cattle. Most of the herd was asleep. They turned east along the lower edge of the herd and then north, Mase starting a rough head count, then realizing he’d have a better chance to check as soon as the bridge was complete. When they drove the longhorns across the bridge, there’d be room enough for only three or four to pass abreast. That’d give him an easy opportunity to count steers.

  “We’re something like two-thirds of the way through the drive,” Mase said. “What are you going to do with your money when you’re paid off? Loose women and cards?”

  “Me? No, boss. Why, I wouldn’t know how to . . .” Rufus cleared his throat. “And cards—why, I never had any luck at that. Uncle Chet says I got a face you can read like a sunlit trail. I figure to go back and give him half to help with the ranch. I want my folks to know. . . .”

  Mase nodded. Many a man had found himself at loose ends and signed up for cowboying just to prove something. “You’re thinking wise with your money. Too many cowpunchers waste their money away before they even get home.”

  Rufus yawned. “Back home I got in a knuckle-buster with my cousin—he seemed to think my uncle favored me over him. Like I was angling to inherit. He give me a pretty good drubbin’—but then again, I broke his nose. Anyhow, I heard you might be hiring, so I come and joined up just so they’d all know I could make my own durn way.”

  The clouds rumbled. The humidity was tangible. They were just completing their circle of the herd when Mase heard an eerie ululation echoing in the canyon. Some of the herd lifted their heads and sniffed the air nervously.

  “That coyotes?” Rufus asked, looking even more nervous than the cows.

  “Nope.” The clouds parted, and moonlight shone down—and Mase saw three sets of golden eyes shining in the darkness about fifty feet off. He drew his rifle from its saddle holster and dismounted, figuring to get a better shot down on the same level, with his boots firmly anchored on the ground.

  “What is it?” Rufus whispered.

  “You never heard a wolf howl before?” Mase asked softly, putting the rifle to his shoulder.

  “Not down where I live, no, sir,” Rufus said.

  Mase aimed between one set of golden eyes—but before he could fire, they flicked out along with the others. The beasts were turning away, dark slinking shapes pacing off to the north. He tried to aim at one of the shapes, but the dark seemed to deepen and he lost sight of them. They were planning to bring down one of the smaller cattle, Mase figured. If he opened fire they’d run—but it was a big herd, and they’d just run to another part of it.

  “Had ’em and lost ’em, Rufus,” Mase said, remounting. “Keep watch.”

  “How many?”

  “At least three moving north.” He glanced at Rufus and smiled, noting the boy seemed suddenly far more wakeful.

  The clouds once more covered the moon, and Mase slowly paced his mount up the edge of the herd, thinking he might want to send Rufus to bring Jimson and some others who were handy with a gun.

  Then the clouds once more released a little light, and he saw two of the wolves fifty feet ahead, canine silhouettes picking up speed, rushing toward a yearling. He shouted, “He-yaw!” and spurred his horse at a gallop toward the wolves, dropped his rifle’s muzzle, and fired. His horse reared as the bullet kicked up the dirt between the wolves and the herd. Two sets of golden eyes turned his way as the wolves hesitated.

  His horse settling, Mase fired again, and one of the wolves yipped, turning to run away from the herd. The other turned to follow its injured fellow. There were shouts from the camp at the rifle reports, and the cattle were getting up, milling, horns clacking, a few of them running from the main group.

  Mase rode to cut the bunch quitters off—just as the rain began coming down in a slanting wall of wet. Mase holstered the rifle and set to controlling the herd. A minute later East Wind galloped up from the camp, followed by Pug.

  “We heard shots!”

  “Wolves!” he yelled. “Gather the herd! Hold ’em!”

  Then another shot sounded, a pistol cracking from the south, and he turned, knowing it had to have been Rufus who’d fired the gun. The rain was lashing down hard, and he couldn’t see past it.

  Mase cantered back along the line of the herd, shouting, “Rufus!” He coughed as rain splashed into his mouth. “Rufus!”

  Then he saw a sprawled figure on the ground—two of them. One was a wolf.

  Mase reined in beside Rufus, leapt off the horse, and crouched beside him. Rufus groaned and turned on his side, trying to get up.

  “Hold on there, boy!” Mase admonished him, shouting to be heard over the pounding rain. “How bad you hurt?”

  “Knocked me down . . . bit me . . . on my arm . . . shot him . . .”

  Pug rode up with a lantern, climbed down, and held it over Rufus. “Got bandages in my saddlebag. Hold on now. . . .”

  In a couple minutes they had a rough bandage stanching the wound on Rufus’s left forearm. They helped him up.

  “Got down for a better shot,” Rufus said. “He run at me, knocked me down tolerable hard. . . .”

  “He can take my horse back to the camp,” East Wind said, dismounting. He looked at the dead wolf.

  It was an adult red wolf, Mase saw. Stone-dead, shot in the chest. The boy must have gotten off the shot as the beast leapt at him.

  “Good shot, kid,” Mase said as Pug helped Rufus onto the horse.

  “He was standing on my chest. . . . I fired right in his neck. . . .” Rufus said, dazedly.

  “Ride double with him,” Mase told East Wind. “Get him back to Dollager. See he gets some alcohol on those bites. Send the other drovers out to me.”

  East Wind nodded, mounted behind Rufus.

  “Rufus,” said East Wind, reaching around him for the reins, “if you can kill a wolf who’s trying to kill you, that’s good warrior medicine. I’m going to skin that critter for you. . . .”

  They rode off to the camp as Mase remounted and said, “Let’s get the herd back in line and away from this here dead wolf. . . .”

  The rain lashed furiously down. It was going to be a long night. . . .

  * * *

  * * *

  The rain quit a little before two in the morning. The clouds broke up enough to admit the glow of the moon and the stars. Bone-tired, Mase went to the river to see if new flooding had swept the cottonwood tree away. No, it still stretched across the river but water splashed over it now in places.

  Mase shook his head and went to his bedroll—which was sopping wet. He laid his slicker over it, put on an overcoat, lay down, and list
ened to the roar of the river. He slept like a dead man.

  Pug woke him at dawn. Mase had told him at the start of the drive to do that every day. Right now he wished he hadn’t. But he got himself up and said, “Coffee?”

  “Coming up.”

  Mase picked up his bedroll and carried it over to a wagon wheel to spread it out so it’d dry. The sky was mostly clear, though fog from the river was drifting around the camp.

  Dollager was at the fire, humming to himself as he stirred an enormous pot of porridge. “Mr. Durst, help yourself to the coffee. It should be ready.”

  “How long before you can feed the camp, coosie?” Mase asked.

  “Ten minutes, sir.”

  “How’s Rufus?”

  “He’s well enough, sir. His head hit a rock, but he’ll be fine if I’m any judge—long as that arm doesn’t get infected. I fancy I cleaned it good and proper.”

  Pug poured coffee for them both, and Mase said, “Let’s get the men up, Pug. Breakfast is about ready. Let Rufus rest, but roust all the others. Who’s on the cattle?”

  “East Wind and Duff. I sent them about an hour ago. He was up skinning that wolf when I woke up. Working by a lantern.”

  Mase grimaced. “Nothing like skinning a wolf first thing in the morning! I’ll spell Duff after I’ve eaten. Let’s get the men working on the bridge soon’s they’ve eaten.”

  A few hours later, spelled by Jimson and Dorge, Mase and East Wind rode in to view the woodwork beside the surging river. The canyon was echoing with the clatter of hammers and the screeching of saws. Every man, including coosie, was working to prepare the split ash tree to be laid down beside the cottonwood. The trunk was stripped of branches, skyward side flattened out, planed smooth. It’d take every rope they could spare to stabilize the two logs till they could nail cross boards connecting them.

  “How we get that ash wood across the river, boss?” East Wind asked.

  “We’re going to use the oxen to line it up with the cottonwood. Then we tie a rope to the north end, and every man is going to cross over and work in a team to pull it over along the top of the cottonwood beam. All of us pulling should do it.”

  “Maybe.”

  Mase glanced at him. He himself wasn’t sure it would work. “You have a better idea?”

  East Wind pointed across the river, a little west, where an apron of pebbly stone protected by an old tree stump stuck out level with the water. Water gushed shallowly over it. “Horses swim. The river will push them down west. But I think they can climb out there if we ride ’em to it. Some men go over the tree with ropes. . . .”

  “With the horses on the other side, we can pull the logs across?” Mase shook his head. “They’d get washed downstream.”

  “Current’s slowed by that cottonwood, boss. Now, we couldn’t get the herd over that way. But horses . . . maybe.”

  “I’ll think on it. You go ahead and help Dollager, and then you may as well finish with that wolfskin. If Rufus is up to it, he can help you scrape the hide with his good arm.” East Wind wasn’t much of a carpenter.

  Mase went to pick up a saw. There was another tree to fell.

  * * *

  * * *

  There was a strange, cold inwardness in Curly’s face when he came back from town with the supplies. Jim was with him, jumping down from the buckboard and waving at his mother.

  Katie, just done putting the laundry on the line, was about to take Bonnie out to check the fence line. “You want to go with me and check the fences, Jim?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “You go on in the barn, lead Bonnie and your pony out of their stalls for me.”

  He ran off to the barn, and she walked up to the buckboard. “Everything all right, Curly?”

  He avoided her eyes as he stepped down from the buckboard. “It cannot be true, senora. I’m sure it is not true.”

  “What? What has Harning done now?”

  “It is not him. The sheriff, he say he has received a message that”—he licked his lips—“that Senor Durst was killed. Up on the Red Trail.”

  The ground seemed to ripple under her as if there had been an earthquake. She put a hand on the buckboard’s wheel to steady herself. “That’s . . . No. Can’t be right.”

  “That’s what I tell him. I say no! I don’t believe.”

  “Where did he hear this?”

  “A message from a Ranger who passes through, senora. He hears it in Leadton.”

  “How . . . how did Mase die?”

  “Stampede, he said. Killed by the cattle.”

  Mase. Dead. It was as if someone had told her the world had been canceled.

  How would she tell Jim? He needed to know soon. Because he’d have to learn to live with it, and that would take a long time for them both. She would have to keep going. She . . .

  Something struck Katie then. A message from a Ranger who passes through, senora.

  A Ranger . . . who’d happened to have been in Leadton. It was all just the word of a man passing through.

  She took a deep breath. “A Ranger? Did the sheriff give that man’s name?”

  “No, senora.”

  A sudden realization took hold of her, and now she was steadier on her feet. The grief washed away. All she felt now was anger. “The sheriff is lying, Curly. You were right—it’s not true. This is Harning trying to get me to give up and move away.” She shook her head. “If Mase was dead—I’d know it.”

  Curly looked at her with his eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I can feel him in the world, Curly. And I’d know if he was gone.”

  Curly’s eyes widened. “Sí! My grandmother—she said something like this. She knew when my grandfather died though he was many miles away.”

  Jim came out of the barn. “They’re waiting for us, Ma!”

  “Jim—come here.”

  He came to her, and she put her arms around him. It was like hugging a part of Mase.

  “You okay, Mama?”

  “Sure I am. But Curly’s going to take you for that ride around the fences, Jim. There’s something I have to do. I’m going to town. I’ve got to see the sheriff.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Why do you do it, Harning?” Beslow leaned back in his chair, looking like he’d bitten into a rotten apple.

  “Why do I do what, Beslow?” Harning asked. He was standing in front of Beslow’s desk, wanting to get his business done and head home. It was late afternoon, and it was a long ride back to the Circle H. But then again, maybe he could stay the night in town. . . .

  “Putting all this pressure on the woman won’t work. Katherine Durst can’t sell you that ranch. It’s not only hers. Hell, it’s in her husband’s name. He’ll be back in due course, and he’ll tell you no. He won’t sell no matter what she says.”

  Harning gave Beslow a dismissive wave of the hand. “My lawyer says that if she takes my money and leaves the place before he comes back, I can move some men in—then we can argue that I’ve got rights there. Maybe I’d lose. Like enough I would. But it’ll tie Mason Durst up in court for a long time, ’specially with Judge Murray on my side. Durst won’t be able to run the ranch till it’s decided. And she’ll be gone! She’s part of what keeps him there. She’ll have the boy with her, too. If he comes back to all that, why he might just give up—”

  “Harning!” Beslow snapped.

  “What?”

  “Shut up. Just—stop talking.”

  “What’s got into you? This deal with the man Chavez is bothering you? It’s over. You gave him the message. You get paid. It’s not your worry. You just decide what you want to do with a thousand dollars, Beslow.”

  He reached into his coat pocket.

  He took the money out and froze when Beslow stood up and said, “Put th
at money back in your pocket. And get out of here.”

  Beslow’s face was red. His hands, pressed to the desktop, were shaking.

  “What’s gotten into you, Beslow?”

  “She was here.” Beslow opened the drawer of his desk, took out a whiskey bottle and a glass, and poured himself a double. “Katie Durst was here.” He drank off half the whiskey. “She knew, Harning. She just looked in my eyes—and she asked me. And I . . . couldn’t keep pretending. She knows he isn’t dead. She could tell just looking at me.”

  “Why, that’s a heap of cow chips! You just lost your nerve, that’s all.”

  “She knew, Beslow.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “Nothing. I just shrugged and said, ‘Maybe he’s not, ma’am. Maybe it was just a rumor.’ It was all I could say. And then she told me what she thought of me.” He licked his lips and said, “And it was what I was thinking myself.” He drank off the rest of the whiskey. “She was right, Harning.” He sank back into his chair, staring at the whiskey bottle. “You do what you want. But keep it all out of my sight because I’m not having anything more to do with this. Now, get out of my office.”

  Harning snorted and put the money back in his coat. “You think you’re a better man than me?” He shook his head. “You’re not.”

  Then he turned and walked out, thinking he wanted a drink himself. He’d stay the night. Maybe see Darlene. Why not? Why have a mistress if you hardly saw her?

  It could be, he thought as he started across the street for the cantina, that the sheriff was right about the legalities. But he hadn’t told Beslow all of it. If he put enough pressure on Katie Durst, she’d break—once she heard for sure that her husband was dead. When he was dead for real.