“Hell,” Haney said, “look at the eye you gave me!”
“What we fight about?”
Haney chuckled. “You expect me to remember? More’n likely I wondered whether you was as tough as you looked.” He chuckled again. “You’re tougher!”
Shorty was at the customhouse with the six horses. He led the way to a place back from the river and on a grassy hillside under the spreading branches of some old trees. “Camped here before,” he explained.
He watched Baptiste come up the rise with the two carts. “Ain’t much of an outfit, but it’s a start,” he suggested. “We’ll need at least two more men, and we should have six.”
“Well just have to look around,” Orrin said, “but there’s three of us now.”
The next man was a volunteer. He approached Shorty, who was having a beer. “You look like a rider,” he suggested. “I’m another, and I’m broke and rustlin’ work.”
His name was Charlie Fleming, and he was from Arkansas, he said. He had two horses of his own and knew where there were four more to be had.
“That’s it,” Orrin told them. “We’ll move out tomorrow. The first thing is to find where that stampede took place and hunt for my brothers, or their bodies.”
“You won’t find much,” Fleming said. “Not after a stampede. I lost a friend thataway, and all we found was his boot heels and some buttons. By the time several hundred head of buffalo run over you, there isn’t much to find.”
“We’ll look,” Haney said. “Tell Sackett was the best friend I ever had. We were in the Sixth Cavalry together.”
Orrin walked back to the hotel. Studiously, he had avoided any thought of his brothers. His job was to get an outfit. When the time came to look, that would be another thing.
Three men riding and one on the carts. Four men riding, counting himself. It was too few, and he should have about ten more horses. Rounding up scattered cattle, if any were left, would be rough on the riding stock.
The first person he saw at the hotel was Nettie Molrone. “Oh, Mr. Sackett! I’m so glad to see you! I’m leaving in the morning for Fort Carlton!”
“Who’s taking you?”
“I’m going with a group. Mrs. McCann is going, and there will be another lady whose husband is there. There are six trappers, Mr. Taylor from the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Kyle Gavin.”
“I wish you luck,” he said. His expression was a little sour, and she noticed it. “I mean, I really do,” he added. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow, too.”
“I know. I mean, Mr. Gavin said he believed you were leaving. He doesn’t think you’ll have much luck.”
“We’ll see.” He hesitated, then said, “I hope you find your brother and that everything goes well for you. Remember, we’ll be miles to the south of you, and once we get the cattle, we’ll be driving west. We’ll follow the South Saskatchewan.”
“But aren’t the cattle down in Dakota?”
“On the border,” he said. “We’ll need several days to round them up.”
He was in his room and combing his hair before going down to dinner when the thought struck him. How did Kyle Gavin know he was leaving?
He didn’t even have his outfit yet, not the men or stock he needed.
Just a surmise, probably. A lucky guess.
Chapter XII
The morning was clear and bright with only a few scattered clouds. The wind sent ripples through the vast sea of grass before them, but the sound of it was lost in the screech and groan of the carts, which were entirely of oak and ungreased.
Highpockets Haney rode up beside Orrin. “You got your work cut out for you, Sackett,” he said. “You ever rounded up cattle scattered by a buffalo stampede? They’re likely to be scattered to hell an’ gone.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“We’ll be workin’ alone most of the time, just the way the Injuns like it.”
“We’ll work in pairs,” Orrin suggested. “Takes less time to bunch them. If trouble comes, use your own judgment. Fight if that’s necessary, but run if you can, just so long as you run together. I don’t want any man left alone unless he’s already dead.”
Now he left them, riding out at least a mile in advance of the carts and the other riders. Since the news had come, there had been no time to be alone, no time to mourn, no time to think, only time for the immediate business, and first things must come first.
They had started to drive cattle to the gold fields because Logan Sackett had promised it. Therefore the job must be continued. Logan was still in trouble, and a Sackett had given his word.
Rumor had it his brothers were dead. He did not believe it, yet it could be. Men died every day, and his brothers were no more immune than their father had been.
It was his mission now to go to the area, accept the risks it entailed, round up the cattle if possible, and find and bury the bodies of his brothers.
Feeling sad was a luxury he could not afford at the moment. With resolution, he turned from sadness to the task at hand. Now, with all going forward, he could think, so he rode far out before his small party where he could ride alone.
He was alone, simply with his horse, the sound of his passing, and the wind in the grass.
Tell and Tyrel — gone! That he could not accept, even for the moment. Tell had always been the older brother, strong, quiet, and sure. He had been less talkative, even, than Tyrel, who was himself quiet. He, Orrin, had always been the easy-talking one, taking after the Welsh side of the family.
He remembered the day when Tell, still only a boy, had ridden off to war. They lived in the mountains of Tennessee and had kinfolk fighting for the Confederacy, but Tell had said, “Ma, I’m a goin’ to war. I’m goin’ to fight for the Union.”
“For the Union, son?”
“Yes, ma. It’s my bounden duty. Our folks fought to build this country, and I’ll not turn my back on it. It’s our country, all of it, Not just the South. And there’s many a boy in Kentucky and Tennessee feels likewise.”
He went in the night, using the old Indian trails, that only mountain folk knew, and somehow he got through to Ohio, and eventually he’d wound up in the Sixth Cavalry. He never said much about the war years, and if he met any kinfolk on the field of battle, he didn’t say.
When it was over, he’d gone to fightin’ Injuns and then quit the army and joined up with a cattle drive. He’d covered a far stretch of country before their paths crossed again in the western lands. So far as they knew. Tell had not been back to Tennessee, which was surprising because there’d been a girl back yonder that he’d been shinin’ up to when the war started.
Tyrel was the youngest but already married and owner of a ranch, part of which his wife brought to him, but which he’d helped to save from renegades in the Land Grant fights. He was better off than any of them. He owned land and stock, but he owed money, and this trip was costing him.
This was wide-open country, yet there were unexpected hollows and valleys, and a man had to keep his wits about him. There were sloughs, small lakes usually surrounded by a thick stand of cattails. The hills were green now; only a few days had made a striking difference. The grass was short but long enough to color the hills with springtime. Wild flowers were everywhere, harebell, silverberry, and blue-eyed grass as well as wild parsley and yellow violet
Here and there were small herds of antelope, and occasionally they saw a buffalo.
That night by their small fire he warned them again. “This here’s Sioux country, and they’re first-class fighting men. You got to expect them all the time.”
On the third day they killed a buffalo for fresh meat and skinned it out with the meadowlarks calling. Orrin’s eyes kept roving, searching, watching, yet a part of his mind was far away, with Nettie Molrone, wondering where she was and how she fared.
Douglas Molrone — he must remember the name and listen for it, yet the gold fields had a way of devouring men, of chewing them up and spitting them out at the ragged ends of the world. It was whiskey and hard work that did them in, standing in cold streams, panning for the elusive gold.
So many times even the best discoveries somehow seemed to come to nothing. Tell had struck it rich in the mountains of Colorado only to have the vein play out. He had taken out a goodly sum, but part of it had gone back into searching for the lost vein. Sometime, somebody would discover it, broken off and shifted by some convulsion of the earth.