Lin merely glanced at him and returned to his work.
The Ox hesitated, glancing over at me where I sat with my coffee cup in my hands; then he went to his horse, mounted, and followed Gilcrist.
“If we weren’t short-handed,” I said to Tyrel, “he’d get his walkin’ papers right now.”
“Sooner or later,” Tyrel agreed. Then he added, “The other one fancies himself with a gun.”
By first light, we were headed down the trail, climbing out of the valley and heading north. A few miles later, I began angling off to the northwest, and by sundown we had come up with the Pipestem again.
The herd was trail broke now, and the country was level to low, rolling hills. We saw no Indians or any tracks but those of buffalo or antelope. The following day, we put sixteen miles behind us.
Each night, just shy of sundown, Tyrel, Cap, or I would scout the country around. Several times, we caught whiffs of smoke from another campfire, but we made no effort to seek them out
Short of sundown on the third day, after our rest, I killed a buffalo, and the Ox came up to lend a hand. I never did see a buffalo skinned out faster or meat cut and trimmed any better. I said as much.
“Pa was a butcher, and I growed up with a knife in hand. Then I hunted buffalo on the southern plains.”
“Take only the best cuts,” I said, “an’ leave the rest”
He was bent over, knife in hand. He turned his head to look at me. “Leave it? For varmints?”
“There’s some Indians close by, and they’re having a bad time of it. Leave some for them.”
“Injuns? Hell, let ’em rustle their own meat. What d’ we care about Injuns?”
“They’re hungry,” I said, “and their best hunter is wounded and laid up.”
Obviously, he believed me crazy. “I never knew an Injun worth the powder it took to kill him.”
“Back in the mountains,” I said, “I knew quite a few. Generally speakin’, they were good folks.”
“We had trouble with them a time or two and they’re good, tough fightin’ men. I’ve also hunted and trapped with them, slept in their lodges. They are like everybody else. There’s good an’ bad amongst them.”
We left some meat on the buffalo hide, and I stuck a branch in the ground and tied a wisp of grass to it. Not that they’d need help findin’ it
Come daylight, when we moved out with the cattle, I took a look, and every last bit of meat was gone, and the hide, also. I counted the tracks of a boy and two women. They’d have read the sign and would know that meat was left a-purpose.
With Cap ridin’ point, the cattle strung out along the trail, and I rode drag. Tyrel was off scoutin’ the country. Pipestem Creek was east of us now, and the country was getting a mite rougher. Maybe it was my imagination. Off on the horizon, far ahead and a hair to the west I could see the top of a butte or hill.
By noontime, that butte was showing strong and clear. It was several hundred feet high and covered with timber. When Tyrel came back to the drag, I rode ahead to talk to Cap.
“Heard of that place,” he said. “They call it the Hawk’s Nest There’s a spring up yonder — good water.”
After a bit, he added, “Big lake off to the north. Maybe a mite east, Devils Lake, they call it. Got its name, they say, from a party of Sioux who were returning victorious from a battle with the Chippewa. Owanda, the Sioux medicine man, had warned them not to make the attack, but they were young bucks, eager for battle and reputation, and they didn’t listen.
“Their folks were watching from the shore, saw them coming far out on the lake, and could tell from the scalps on the lifted lances that they’d been victorious.
“Well, some say that night came down. It had been dusk when they were sighted. Night came, but the war party didn’t. That day to this, nobody’s seen hide nor hair of them. Devils in the lake, the Injuns say.”
“Owanda must have been really big medicine after that” I commented.
“You can bet he was. But the way I hear it, he was one of the most powerful of all medicine men. Lot of stories about him. First I heard of him was from the Cheyenne.”
Cap went on to his flank position, and I took over the point riding well out in front studying the country as we moved. Wherever possible, I held the herd down off the skyline. We didn’t want to get in the bottoms and among the trees but at least as low as we could move while handling the cattle. There were Indians about and if they did not know of us now, they would very soon, but I wanted to attract as little attention as possible.
At the same time, I was studying our future. The grass was growing, and soon it would be high enough for grazing. Until then, the cattle would be eating last year’s grass. We were getting a jump on the season, and that was why we were not pushing along. We had to stall until the grass was up.
By that time, we should have met with Orrin and his Red River carts. Or so we hoped.
Westward the drive was long. The camp for which we were headed was in rugged mountain country, and we had to make it before the snow started falling. Once the grass was up and we had Orrin with us, we’d have to push hard, even at the risk of losing flesh from those steers.
Tyrel and me, we didn’t even have to talk to know what the other one was thinking. It was almost that way with Cap.
Gilcrist and the Ox were worrisome men. Tyrel was right when he said Gilcrist fancied himself with a gun, and while I’d never wanted the reputation of gunfighter, a reputation both Tyrel and me had, I kind of wished now Gilcrist knew something about us. Might save trouble.
Many a man thinks large of himself because he doesn’t know the company he’s in. No matter how good a man can get at anything, there’s always a time when somebody comes along who’s better.
It was Tyrel who worried me, too. Tyrel was a first-class cattleman, a good man with handling men, and he never hunted trouble, but neither did trouble have to look very far to find him. Orrin an’ me, we might back off a little and give a trouble-huntin’ man some breathin’ space.
Not Tyrel — you hunted trouble with him, you’d bought yourself a packet. He didn’t give breathing space; he moved right in on you. A man who called his hand had better be reaching for his six-shooter when he did it.
Worst of it was, he seemed kind of quiet and boy-like, and a body could make a serious mistake with him.
Back in the high-up hills where we came from, fightin’ was what we did for fun. You got into one of those shindigs with a mountain boy and it was root hog or die. Pa, who had learned his fightin’ from boyhood and seasoned himself around trappers’ rendezvous, taught us enough to get started. The rest we picked up ourselves.
The wind was picking up a mite, and there was a coolness on it that felt like rain, or snow. It was late in the season for snow, but I’d heard of snow in this country when it was summer anywhere else. When we were close to the Hawk’s Nest, we bedded them down for the night.
“Lin, feed ’em as quick as ever you can,” I said to the cook. “I think we’re sittin’ in for a spell of weather.” I pointed toward the Hawk’s Nest. “I’m going up yonder to have a look over the country before it gets dark.”
The Hawk’s Nest was a tree-capped butte rising some four hundred feet above the surrounding country, and when I topped out, I found a gap in the trees and had a good view of the country.
There was a smoke rising about a mile up the creek from where we were camped at the junction of the Pipestem and the Little Pipestem. Far ahead, I could see a line of green that showed the Pipestem curved around to the west. Somewhere off there was the Sheyenne.
The water in the spring was fresh and cold. I drank, then watered the line-back dun I was riding and swung into the saddle. Just as I was starting to come off the top, I glimpsed another smoke, only this one was to the west of us and seemed to be coming from a bottom along the Pipestems as it came from the west and before it began its curve toward the south.