He snorted and blew, tugged and crashed one horn against the tree, but it was sturdy and held its place. Wild-eyed, he peered up at me, undoubtedly thinking of all he would do if he got free. I walked my horse into the shade and wondered why we had come so far without additional horses, when Fuentes came through the brush riding a short coupled bay, with black mane and tail, and leading a roan. “Meant to get the horses before nooning,” he said. “I got to worrying about those brands.”
We moved into the slight shade of some mesquite clumps and I switched my saddle. “I’ll take your horse back.” He pointed. “There’s a corral… an old one … over there.”
“Water?”
“Si … good water. It is an old place. A Comanchero place, I think.” He glanced at the steer. “Ah? So you have the old devil? Three times I have chased that one!”
“I wish you’d caught him. He nearly got me.”
Fuentes chuckled. “Remember the bones, amigo! Nobody lives forever!” I stared after him as he rode away, leading my horse. “Nobody lives forever,” he said, “and nobody does … but I want to!”
The horse was a good one, and he put in a hard afternoon. By the time Fuentes had come along, he was played out. Now he was leading a big old ox, heavy-muscled and slow. “Amigo, this is Ben Franklin Ox. He is old and slow but very wise. We will tie him together with your wild one, then we will see what happens!”
A good neck-ox—which Ben Franklin Ox certainly was—could be worth his weight in gold to an outfit with wild steers to bring out of the brush, and Ben Franklin knew his job. We tied them together and left them to work it out. Of course, unless the wild one died, Ben would bring him in a few days from now, right to the home corral at the ranch. If the steer died, we’d have to track them down and release Ben.
We fell into bed that night too worn out to talk, almost too tired to eat. Yet at daybreak, I was outside washing in ice-cold water when Fuentes came out, rubbing his eyes. “How many head, do you think?” “Hundred … more probably, along with what we’ve got on the trail.”
“Let’s take them in.”
He got no argument from me. Fuentes was a good enough cook, better than me, but the food Barby Ann put out was better. We’d ride in, deliver our stock, catch a fast meal and start back.
“The old corral?” He squatted on his heels and drew a map in the dust. “It is here? You see? I will cook something, you take our horses and bring back mounts for us. Better bring our own horses, too, so we can leave them at the ranch.” Saddling up, I lit out, leading his horse. It was only a few miles, and I did not relish leaving the dun out there so far from home. Ma gave me that dun, and it was a fine horse who understood my ways.
The way he had shown was closer than the way we had gone while rounding up steers, so it was no more than a half hour before I topped out on a rise in thick brush and glimpsed the corral not more than half a mile off. Suddenly, I pulled up, standing in my stirrups.
It looked to me like somebody … No, I must be mistaken. Nobody would be at the corral. After all …
Yet I rode cautiously, and came down into the clearing smelling dust … My own? Or had somebody been there? The horses had their heads up, looking over the corral bars toward the east, where the old trail led off toward the once-distant settlements. I thought I had seen somebody, but had I? Was it just a trick of the eyes? Of the imagination?
Slipping the thong from my pistol, I walked on up to the corral and glanced toward the old cabin. Keeping a horse between me and it, I stripped my gear, roped a fresh horse and then called the dun to me. As I worked, my eyes swept the ground. Tracks … fresh tracks. A shod horse, and well-shod at that. Saddling the fresh horse, an almost white buckskin with black rnane and tail and four black legs, I listened and looked, without seeming to.
Nothing.
Turning my horse into the corral, I checked the trough through which the spring had been guided to be sure there was water. There was … but there was something else, too. There were a couple of green threads caught in the slivers at the edge of the trough—the sort of thing that might happen if a man bent over to drink from the pipe and his neckerchief caught on the slivers. I took them in my hand, then tucked them away in my shirt pocket. Somebody had been at the corral. Somebody had drunk here, but why had they not come by the line-shack? In cattle country, even an enemy would be welcomed at mealtime, and many a cattleman in sheep country had eaten at sheep wagons. In a country where meals and food might be many miles apart, enmity often vanished at the side of the table.
Balch had not hesitated to come to our fire, nor would his men be likely to. Yet somebody had come here and had ridden swiftly away, somebody who had deliberately avoided our line-shack, which everybody in the country was sure to know.
Leading my horse and that of Fuentes, as well as a fresh horse for him, I started back.
Fuentes had suggested that Roger Balch was a trouble hunter, so it was unlikely that he would hesitate to stop by. Nor Balch, either, for that matter. Saddler? I had an idea Saddler spent little time out on the range. What of that other man? The one who seemed somehow familiar?
Irritably, I rode back. There was a lot going on that I did not like. One thing I had done before leaving the corral, and that was to look to see how the tracks had pointed, and they had gone east, a man riding a horse with a nice, even stride … a horse more carefully shod than many a western horse I’d seen. “Balch leaves the major alone?” I asked suddenly. Fuentes glanced at me. “Of course. You do not think—“ He broke off and then he said, “Balch may have other ideas. You see, the major has a daughter.” “A daughter?” The thought made no connection and Fuentes saw it, smiling tolerantly.
“The major has a daughter, and the largest outfit anywhere around. And Balch has a son.”
“Then—?”
“Of course … And why not?” Why not, indeed. But where did that leave Barby Ann?
As we moved back what cattle we had, our work was cut out for us. Most of the stock had kind of settled down, but there were two or three hardheaded old mossyhorns who would keep cutting back and trying to head for the breaks, and the worst of all was a lean old cow with one horn growing across, in front of her skull, and one perfectly set for hooking, and she knew it. We’d had unusually good luck. Time and again I’ve combed the breaks for cattle on one outfit or another and come up with nothing, or only a few head. Of course, this was the beginning, and it would get tougher as we went along, and the cattle more wary.
Right now, most of them hadn’t decided what was happening. Hopefully, by the time they did they’d be at the ranch and mixing with the growing herd on the flat.
5
It was sundown before we got in. Danny and Ben Roper were down on the flat with about sixty head. I scanned their gather and then looked over at Fuentes, who had cut in close to me. “Same thing here,” I commented. “No young stuff.” Joe Hinge was in front of the bunkhouse with a man I hadn’t seen before, a lean, hungry-looking man with no six-shooter in sight but a rifle in his hand. He had careful blue eyes and an easy way about him.
“Talon, this here’s Bert Harley. He’s a neighbor of ours, helps out once in a while.”
“Pleased,” he said, bobbing his head a little. Seemed to me there was a kind of a stop in his eye movement when Hinge said my name, but it could have been imagination.
“He’ll help with the night herding. And we’ll need all the help we can get.” Harley strolled over to the corral and flipped out a loop to catch up a horse. I poured water into the tin basin and rolled up my sleeves. “Looked that bunch over?” I said to Hinge.
“You mean the size of it? You an’ Tony must’ve worked your tails off.”