“Vern? You’re crazy! I wouldn’t cross Vern for all the tea in China. He’s meaner than you are, and a whole sight better with a gun.”
“Maybe.”
When he set off a-walking I went back up through the trees and found my trail.
And it surely wasn’t intentional that when nightfall was coming on I saw the lights of the Rossiter place. Took me all of a minute to decide to ride down there and share potluck with them. There was a chance that I’d run into Curly, but a good chance that I’d not, and a few good home-cooked vittles wouldn’t go at all bad … or seeing Miss Meg, either.
However, before I decided to settle in for the night I’d just make sure Curly wasn’t there. No use stirring up trouble on their doorstep. It was bad enough that I had shooting to think of without worrying mem.
Rossiter was just unsaddling a gray gelding when I came into the yard. “How are you, boy? Light an’ set.”
“Don’t mind if I do, only there’s been shooting trouble and there’ll be more, so I’d better ask. Are you expecting Curly Dunn?”
“No.”
“All right then. I’ll stop and gladly.”
“Now just a minute. I said I wasn’t expecting him, and I am not, but that doesn’t mean he might not show up. He’s coming over here every few days.”
Nevertheless, the warmth and comfort of a woman-kept house was too much for me to turn down, so I stripped the gear from the mustang and turned it into the corral.
We walked side by each up to the house and he spoke of the shooting trouble. “I knew there were hard feelings, but I didn’t know it had come to that.” So I told him about Jobe taking a shot at me.
“Was he hurt bad?”
“I didn’t examine him. Looked to me like a burn along the ribs, and he may lose a good deal of blood. Maybe I nicked the inside of his arm, too. He was holding it mighty odd.”
We went in the door and Meg was there and she said, “Pa, supper’s ready. Who’re you talking to?” And then she seen me.
“Oh … you?” she said disdainfully. “I was hoping it was Curly.”
“If he’s got over his beating,” I said, “I’ll bet he wasn’t able to kiss you for a week, with those mashed-up lips of his.”
“That’s probably why you hit him there,” she accused.
“Are you funnin’? I never gave it no thought. Why should I care who he kisses? Anyway, we weren’t fighting over you. We were fighting because he had an awfully big opinion of himself and he figured to teach me something.”
“I don’t care why you fought,” she said irritably. “You were like two animals! Now sit down and eat.”
So I sat down. And she could really fix grub. I told her so. “Ma’am, for a woman with a harpy’s tongue you can surely put vittles together. I declare, it’s a wonder some man hasn’t sweet-talked you into marrying him.”
“I’ve never heard any sweet-talk from you!”
“No, ma’am, I was never given to it. I reckon I’d just have to bundle a girl up in my arms and kiss her real good. I wouldn’t be much for talking.”
“Why pick her up?” she demanded. “That’s no way to do.”
“Well, now. If she was as short as you—”
She stepped right up to me. “I’m not all that short!”
“Maighdlin!” Rossiter said sharply. “Put the supper on the table.”
She finished putting supper on the table and she had no more to say all through it, but while Rossiter and me talked of cattle and beef prices and how a herd might increase, I kept a-thinking that maybe she wasn’t that short. Especially if she stood on tiptoe.
Chapter XII
It didn’t do me any good to stall around the next morning, although I never taken so long to saddle a horse in all my born days. Nor so long over breakfast, either. I was hoping Meg would show up but she didn’t and after awhile I swung into the saddle and rode off up the trail.
When I was maybe a mile off and away higher up I glanced back in time to see a small figure come running from the ranch house and stop there in the yard, and I lifted my arm and waved, but surely she could not see me at the distance and against the mountain.
Two days of riding it needed before I came up with the herd. I saw their dust long before I rode up to it, but when I came near I swung off to one side so’s not to turn them. Whoever was riding point had gone off somewhere, but that big old brindle steer in the lead needed no help.
Halfway down the herd I came up to Parmalee, looking like a dude. He pulled in and thrust out his hand, and dude he might be but he had power in that grip. I had a feeling those flatland Sacketts had much to be said for them other than money, for they were all well off. Nick Shadow rode up from the drag and allowed he was glad to see me. It had been a hard drive.
“You’re coming into good range now,” I said, “but nothing like what your headed for along the La Plata.”
“Well need some hands,” Parmalee said. “Most of these just joined up for the drive.”
“You got anything against Indians?”
“No … why?”
“I’ve just taken on a whole set of them. Tough old warrior and some followers of his. He came to me hunting advice, and looking for a place to light.”
“So you took them on,” Shadow said. “Good for you.”
He looked at my face, which still carried a few scars. “You’ve had trouble, then?”
“I had a difficulty with Curly Dunn. I was in no shape for it, but I whopped him. A couple of days back I had a run in with Jobe. I scratched him with a bullet, but don’t take them lightly, old Bull Dunn is a tough man.”
“Old?”
“Aw, you know! He ain’t that old. Maybe forty, but he must weight about two hundred and fifty pounds and I don’t think any of it is fat.”
We rode along together, the three of us, talking things over and reminding ourselves of other days, other cattle, other drives. Time to time I kept looking back into my mind for pictures of Meg, knowing I was a damned fool all the time I was doing it. She was like every other girl that age who likes to flirt and think about love and such. Curly had the inside track there, and I knew it, but that couldn’t keep a body from dreaming, and dreamable girls were almighty scarce in this country.
It was on that drive that I learned that Shadow was one of the best hands with a rope I’d ever come across. He used the rawhide rope, the la reata that Americans have cut down to lariat. He’d learned it from the Californios, and he worked with a rope sixty feet long. He could really make that rope stand up and perform. He never tied fast, though. A man who ties fast with a rawhide rope is in trouble. When a big steer, say a thousand pounds give or take a few, hits the end of that rope something’s got to give. A hemp rope will stand the gaff better, but Shadow liked rawhide and he stuck with it, and I never saw anybody who could rope any better.
He was a good hand with stock and he never shied from doing his fair share of the work. They had brought eighteen hundred head of mixed stuff, and a few of them were Texas longhorns, big, rangy beasts who could walk the legs off any other kind of cow crittur and most horses. They’d brought the herd along carefully and they didn’t seem to have lost much weight on the trail.
Aside from Parmalee and Shadow there were just four hands and the cook, which was nowhere near enough even after the herd was trail broke. Seven hands were all right as long as there was no trouble. Now that I had come along there were eight and that extra man meant all the difference.
“I can’t figure it,” I said that night at the fire. “Bull Dunn told everybody he was going to run us out. He’s made his brags, now he’s got to make good, so why hasn’t he done something?”
“Maybe he was waiting until Galloway was alone,” Parmalee suggested.
“He’s waiting for the cattle,” Shadow said. “What does he gain by running you out? He keeps the country to himself, but is that enough? If he runs you out after you have your cattle brought in then those cattle are going to run loose on the range, and after a respectable time he’ll just start slapping his brand on them all. And who’s to stop him?”