Which brought me around to thinking of myself and just where I was headed. Barnabas seemed to know. He had gone to school in Europe, living part of the time with relatives we had in France. I’d been content with wild country and lonely trails, but I kept asking myself if that was going to be enough? Just being a good cowhand took a hell of a lot of man. It also took a lot out of a man, and I was too restless to stay put. As a cowhand I wasn’t as good as either Fuentes or Ben Roper. They knew things by instinct that I’d never learn, and the best thing I had going for me was uncommon strength, endurance and some savvy about stock. And most of all, the willingness to get in there and work. Maybe the thing wrong with me was that back there in Colorado we had the Empty … the MT outfit that had more cattle, more water and better grass than any of the outfits since.
This was good country, and I liked it. But two weeks of riding would put me right back on land that belonged to me, and that made a difference in my thinking.
Rossiter knew who I was, and so did Lisa, whoever she was, but I didn’t want anybody else to know. Henry Rossiter wasn’t apt to talk, and somehow I didn’t think Lisa would either. Just for luck I threw a saddle on a buckskin, tied him to the corral and then, taking my rifle, I walked up on the highest knoll around.
A man can ride a lot of country without really knowing it until he gets up high and gets a good picture of how it lays. There are always some areas that will fool him by their position in relation to others. I’d noticed that when I was a youngster back at the Empty, and recalled how surprised I’d been when I first saw an accurate map of the ranch layout.
What I was looking for now was cattle. If I could see a few head I could save a lot of riding, and I’d combed too many likely spots to be confident. Also, I had some thinking to do.
There were too many things that made me uneasy. In the first place, blind or not, Henry Rossiter had stolen cattle before and might be doing it again, with help.
In the second place there was that girl Lisa. Where did she belong? Who was she? Nobody at the dance and box social seemed to have any idea of who she was, and strangers didn’t stay strangers very long in the western lands. Suddenly I caught a flicker of movement and saw a big steer come up out of a draw, followed by several others. I watched, waiting until six had appeared. The big steer was in the lead, and they were a good half mile away. They paused to sniff the air, then moved on into a hollow I remembered visiting a few days before. There was grass there, but no water.
Walking back to the corral I stepped into the saddle. The weather was changing. The air was still, yet great black thunderheads were looming up along the horizon. Rain? It seemed doubtful. Too often in this west Texas country I’d seen the clouds pile up and just hang there, sometimes with lightning, but not a drop of rain.
Riding out of the hollow, I cut across the slope of the hill toward the brush where I’d seen the cattle. Now there’s some stock that will drive easy enough. You get them headed the right way and maybe one or two will try to cut out, but generally speaking that bunch will walk right along. There’s others you couldn’t herd for sour apples. No matter which way you try to head them, they decide that isn’t the way they want to go. With luck this bunch would be of the first kind. The closer I got, the more I began to wonder about that big steer who’d been leading them. Even at that distance he’d looked mighty big … too big. Brindle? Maybe … and if so I wanted no part of him. When an outfit is in a rush to gather cattle, there’s no need to cripple a horse, or a man trying to get one mean steer. He isn’t worth the trouble, and no doubt that was why Ol’ Brindle had gotten along so far … he was just too mean to handle. I wanted no part of him.
So I eased down into that tree-filled draw where I’d seen those cattle go, and right away spotted several of them. I sat my horse a bit, studying the layout. There was no sign of the big steer. Once I thought I detected a spot of color back in the brush, but sunlight on a tree trunk seen through the brush might look like a steer. They’d seen me, but I was bothering them none at all, and they paid me no mind. Finally, I walked my horse kind of angling toward them with an idea of taking them up the draw and onto the plain behind it. An old, half-white range cow started away from me, and that buckskin I was riding knew what he was about. He already knew what I had in mind, and we started that cow toward the draw. We came up on another and another, and they started off, pretty as could be. They got right to the mouth of the draw before one of them suddenly cut left, and another right, and the seven head we had by that time scattered, going everywhere but up the draw where I wanted them to go. My buckskin took out after the first one and we cut her back toward the draw. Slowly we began to round them up again, but they had no notion of going up that draw at all. Well, there was another down the creek a ways, and there was a chance I could ease them up on the plain without them knowing it, so I commenced pushing them downcreek, ever so easy.
I’d made a couple of hundred yards with them when something spooked that old half-white cow and she cut out, running, and the others after her. Before I finally got them rounded up again, my buckskin was worn to a frazzle and so was my patience, but I did get them together and headed for the plain. There was a place where the creek bed narrowed down between some bluffs, with maybe fifty yards between them, with a lot of deadfalls and brush in there, some of it blackened by an old fire. Off to one side there were several big old cottonwoods, one pecan and a lot of willow brush mixed with catclaw and wait-a-bit. I was right abreast of it when I happened to glance right, and there was Ol’ Brindle.
He was standing in thick brush, his head down a little, looking right at me. It had been said he weighed maybe eighteen hundred, but whoever said that hadn’t seen him lately. He was bigger … and standing there in that brush he looked as big as an elephant and meaner than anything you ever did see. I don’t know what possessed me but I said, “In, fella!” And his head came up like he’d been stuck with a needle. He glared at me, showing the whites of his eyes, and those horns of his were needle-sharp. If he charged me in among those deadfalls, that dry creek bed and the brush, I’d have no more chance than a hen at a hoboes’ picnic. But he didn’t. He just stood there glaring at me, and I turned my head to watch my stock. And for the second time I got the break of my life. As I turned my head there was a flash, a sharp concussion, and the echoes of a shot racketing away against the bluffs. I hit the ground hard, automatically kicking free of the stirrups as I fell. I hit the ground, rolled over, and then felt a blinding pain in my skull. For a moment I thought that steer had rushed me. I could hear the pound of my horse’s hooves as he raced away, and then I just faded out.
11
When I opened my eyes again, I thought I was sure enough crazy. A few drops of rain were falling, and something was snuffling around me. I heard a snort as it smelled blood, and out of the tail of my eye I saw a hoof within inches of my side, part white, and a big, scarred hoof.
Ol’ Brindle was standing right over me. He pushed at my side with his nose—curiously, I thought—but the drops of rain continued to fall and he rumbled down low in his chest, and then went away from me. I heard his steps, heard him pause, probably to look back, and then he went on. I let the air out of my lungs then.