“Old Brindle?”
“Si … a big one, amigo, maybe eighteen hundred pounds. About nine years old, I think, and horns like needles … and long … like so.” He held out his arms to show me. “He killed a horse for me last year, treed me and kept me up a tree until long after sundown. Then, when I got away, he picked up my trail and came after me. Very bad, amigo … You watch! Very bad! I think he killed somebody.” “Stirrup-Iron?”
“Spur,” Fuentes said, “and he hates me … All men. You be careful, amigo. He will kill. He will hunt you. He was born hating, born to kill. He is like a Cape buffalo, amigo, and a bad one.”
I’d seen them before. Maybe not as evil as this one, but the longhorn was a wild animal, bred in the thickets and the lonely places, fearing nothing on earth. To those who have seen only domestic cattle, he was unbelievable … and no more to be compared to them than a Bengal tiger to a house cat. We ate, and we fell into our bunks and slept like dead men, for morning was only hours away, and our muscles were heavy with weariness. As if we had not troubles enough, with men stealing our cattle, with a mysterious girl who belonged we knew not where-nor to whom-and now this … a killer steer.
10
Ben Roper came by the line-cabin bringing six head of horses to turn into our corral. “Figured you’d need ‘em,” he said. “How’s the coffee?” “Help yourself,” I said.
We walked inside where it was out of the wind. Fuentes looked up from a job of mending a riata. “You findin’ any cows?”
“Young stuff seems to have left the country,” Ben said, and I told him what I’d found. “Southeast, you say?” He frowned, filling his cup. “That’s rough country. Kiowa country.”
He looked at my hat. “That wasn’t no Kiowa,” he commented. “If it had of been, he’d a-kept comin’. Chances are, there’d have been more of them.” “The tracks I saw were shod horses.”
“This here’s a white man,” Ben decided. “One that doesn’t want to be seen.”
“Brindle’s around,” Fuentes commented.
“Leave him be,” Ben said. “Joe told me to tell you that, if Brindle showed up.
He ain’t worth a ruined horse or a busted leg.”
“I’d like to put a rope on him,” I said. “Be something to tie on to.”
“You leave him alone. Be like ropin’ a grizzly.” “We used to do that in California,” Fuentes said. “Five or six of us. Put two or three ropes on him, snag him to a tree and then let him fight a bull. Makes quite a scrap.”
“You leave Brindle alone,” Ben got up. He glanced over at me. “You want to trail those cattle?”
“When there’s time. I’ve got a feeling they aren’t far off, and that the thief is somebody around here.”
“Balch?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know anything about Balch other than he’s hard to get along with, and seems to want to have the range all to himself.” Ben Roper got up. “Got to get back. We’re pullin’ ‘em in. But like you say, it’s mostly old stuff.”
He rode off toward the home ranch and Fuentes and me crawled into the saddle. Both of us had our Winchesters, because even if they were in the way sometimes, you’d better have one in case of Kiowas.
We cut off due south into a wide plain, bunches of mesquite here and there, with enough catclaw and prickly pear to keep it interesting. We found a few head, all pretty wild. “They’ve been hustled,” I told Fuentes. “Somebody has been down here hunting calves.”
Several times we saw tracks … cow-pony tracks, a shod horse. We rounded up eight or ten head and started them back toward the ranch, adding a couple more, who joined the drive of their own free will. I’d cut off into some rocks to see if any cattle were holed up in the breaks along the foot of a cliff, and suddenly come into a little hollow, wind-sheltered from three sides by the cliff and partly sheltered by mesquite on the other. It was a nice, cozy little spot, and like all other such spots, somebody else thought so, too. There was a seep … nothing very much … and the ashes of old fires. When I saw the ashes, I pulled up and stopped my horse where he was, not wishful of leaving more tracks. From the saddle, I could see that somebody had left a pile of wood back under the overhang of a rock, where it would stay dry. So whoever had been here expected to come back.
“Makin’ himself to home,” Fuentes said, grinning at me. We drove on. I rousted an old steer out of the brush, and a couple of range cows in surprisingly good shape. We corraled the cattle and it was shading up to dark when we rode up to the cabin.
There was a saddled horse tied to the corral bars, and a light in the cabin. Fuentes glanced at the brand. Balch and Saddler. We both stepped down. “I’ll have a look,” I said. “Be right back to care for my horse.” “Watch yourself.”
It was Ingerman. He had a fire going and had made fresh coffee. He looked up from under light eyebrows whitened even more by the sun. His old gray hat was pushed back, and he had a cup in his hand.
“You sure stay out late,” he said. “Figured you’d developed cat eyes to see in the dark.”
“We’re shorthanded,” I said. “Everybody works hard.”
He tried a swallow. “Better have some. I make a good cup of coffee.” Taking a cup from the shelf, I filled it. He watched me, a hard humor in his eyes. “Milo Talon,” he said. “Taken me a while to place you.” I tried the coffee. “It is good. You want a job as cook? We can’t pay much but the company’s good.”
“You got a name along the Trail,” he commented, looking into his cup. “They tell me you’re pretty handy.”
“Just enough,” I said, “I don’t hunt trouble.”
“But you’ve handled some boys who did.” He took another swallow. “Sure you don’t want to work for us?” He looked at me, his eyes hard and measuring. “You may not know it, but there’s some boys noosing a rope for the Stirrup-Iron riders.” “Be a long time using it,” I said, casually. “What they upset about?”
“Losing cows … Losing too many cows.”
Fuentes came in the door and looked at Ingerman, then at me. “He makes a good cup of coffee,” I said. “Have some.”
“Losing cattle,” I said. “All young stuff?”
Ingerman nodded. “Somebody wants to get rich three or four years from now. Balch figures its Rossiter.”
“It isn’t,” I told him. “We’re losing stock, too. I don’t think there’s anything on the place younger than three years. What did you come over for, Ingerman?” “First, because I remembered you. Want you riding with us.” He grinned at me. “I could kill you if I had to, but you’re good. You’d probably get some lead into me and I’d rather not have it. We’ll pay you more than you’ll get here, and you’ll have better horses to ride.”
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “And you’ll be on the right side when the hanging starts.”
“How about Fuentes?”
“Roger Balch doesn’t take to Mexicans. Never seen any harm in them, myself.” “Forget it. I ride for Stirrup-Iron. You might tell Balch he should have a talk with me before he starts swinging that loop of his. If hanging starts and the shooting begins, we’ll take Balch and Saddler first, but there need be no shooting. Something’s going on here, but it isn’t us, and I don’t think it’s your outfit.”
“Then who is it?”
I shrugged. “Somebody else.”
He emptied his cup. “You been told.” Then he added, “You watch your step. Tory Benton wants your hide.”
“His knife isn’t big enough to take it,” I said. “If he says that again, you tell him to go to Laredo.”
“Laredo? That where you bury your dead?”
“No,” I replied, “that’s where I tell men to go whom I don’t want to bury. It’s a nice town, and he’d like it.”
When he had gone, Fuentes sliced some bacon into a pan. “What do you think, amigo?”
“I think somebody steals their cows, somebody steals our cows, and somebody plans on the two of us killing each other off. I think somebody wants both outfits, and all the range. And in the meantime he’s gathering stock for his ranch to have when the shootin’s done.”
Fuentes left me in the morning to work a small valley north of us by himself. The wind had died down and I took a cold bath in the water tank, then shaved and dressed, and all the while I knew I was stalling. For my mind kept returning to the trail, and mixed with it were thoughts of Lisa. Who was she? Where did she live, and with whom? I was not in love with her, but she offered a puzzle that kept gnawing away at my mind. Maybe there was more of Barnabas in me than I had thought. He was the scholar of the family, but we shared some traits in common.