From Hide and Horn (A Floating Outfit Book Number 5) (7 page)

Travel-dirty, showing signs of having ridden
far and hard, the Kid stood for a moment looking around the camp.
From hat to boots, all his wearing apparel was black, including the
gunbelt, which carried a walnut-handled Colt Dragoon revolver butt
forward in the holster at the right side and an ivory handled James
Black bowie knife sheathed at the left. Hair as black as the wing
of a deep-South crow gave more hint of his Indian blood than did
his red-hazel eyes and handsome, almost babyishly innocent cast of
features. The eyes were alert, constantly watchful, almost alien in
such a face. Dressed cowhand style, he gave the impression of
latent, controlled, deadly danger; as a cougar did when sleeping on
a limb.

‘
See you’ve got a fresh relay, Lon,’
Dusty greeted, knowing the four horses led by the Kid were not
those he had taken to Mineral Wells.

‘
Left the others at the Swinging G and
got some that warn’t so tuckered out,’ the dark youngster
explained. ‘Where-at’s Colonel Charlie?’

‘
Out with the herd. He’ll likely be
back soon. Do you want to see him about something real
important?’

‘
Sure. But it can wait until he gets
back. I’ll tend to my mount and eat. Then if he’s not back, we’ll
ride out and meet him.’

‘
I’ll come and help you
with
’em, Kid,’ Vern offered.

‘
Gracias
,’
grinned the Kid. ‘We’ll split it up fair. You tend to the
relay and I’ll see to ole Thunder here.’

‘
I
wouldn’t have it any
other way,’ Vern replied, walking across but waiting until the Kid
released the horses and handed over the reins. Anybody who took
liberties like approaching the white stallion too closely would
right soon come to regret the indiscretion.

Talk welled up around the fire
as the Kid and Vern departed towards the remuda with the horses.
Looking around, Dusty noted gratefully that the tension had gone
from the atmo
sphere. The Kid’s arrival had given Willock a chance to let
the showdown against Dusty pass without losing face. So the cowhand
resumed his seat during the conversation and stayed quiet,
studiously avoiding making any movement or sound that might catch
the small Texan’s attention.

Not that Willock needed to worry about that.
Satisfied that he had made his point, Dusty was quite prepared to
let the matter drop. Later he might be compelled to prove himself
by physical means, but felt content to wait until the moment was
forced upon him. Dusty knew, as did the whole crew, that Willock
had backed water. He would gain nothing and only increase any
resentment Willock felt by emphasizing the point. So, as far as
Dusty was concerned, the incident had run its course and was at an
end.

Helped by Vern, the Kid made good time in
attending to the needs of his five horses. Leaving his stallion to
roam free for the night, secure in the knowledge that it would come
when needed, he turned the other four in with the remuda. Then,
carrying his saddle, he returned to the fire. In passing, Vern
exchanged scowls with Willock. However they both knew better than
to resume their quarrelling. They had come out of the first time
without punishment, but Dusty would hot deal so gently with them in
future.

The Kid had finished his meal and spread his
blankets alongside Dusty’s, then was about to suggest he and Dusty
went out to meet Goodnight, when the rancher returned. Hearing his
scout’s request for an interview, Goodnight collected a meal and
went to the bed-wagon. With his plate on the tailgate, he stood
with the Kid and Dusty in the light of the lantern which hung from
the canopy’s rear support. Interested eyes studied them from the
fire, but none of the crew offered to come across and satisfy their
curiosity.

‘
Looks like you’ve been
moving,
Cuchilo,’
Goodnight remarked, using the Kid’s Comanche man-name ‘The
Knife’, granted with regard to his skill in using one.

‘
Some,
Chaqueta-Tigre,’
the Kid answered, returning the compliment by
addressing the rancher as ‘Jaguar Coat’, given to him by his
Nemenuh
^x
enemies in the days when he rode with
Cureton’s Rangers. ‘I trailed that feller clear up to Throckmorton,
only he was travelling so fast I couldn’t catch up to him, and I
hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Chisum neither. Got to thinking maybe
the feller’d quit the Long Rail on account of them stolen cattle.
Anyways, I was out of makings and with Throckmorton so close, I
reckoned I’d ride in and buy some. I’m right pleased I did
now.’

‘
Apart from not believing
the part about you
buying
tobacco,’ Dusty put in, ‘you’re starting to get me
interested.’

‘
What I learned
was
—’
the Kid began, speaking the deep-throated
Pehnane
dialect which Goodnight understood but
Dusty did not.

‘
Talk U.S., you damned
slit-eye,’
Dusty grinned. ‘I apologize, you did buy some
tobacco—once.’

‘
Cut the fooling, blast you!’ Goodnight
grunted, eyes sparkling good-humoredly. ‘You’re worse’n two old
women.’

‘
I
accepts that
apology, sir,’ the Kid replied, bowing to the rancher. ‘Like I
said, I’d got to thinking that feller’d quit Chisum and was getting
all set to bawl Mark out for wasting my valuable time when I got
back. Only it come out that ole Mark’s smarter’n I figured—which
he’d have to be comes to a point—’

‘
Is he always like this?’ Goodnight
groaned.

‘
You’re seeing him at one of his better
times,’ Dusty assured his uncle.

‘
Anyways,’ the Kid continued, after
giving a lofty sniff. ‘Seems like Chisum’d been to Throckmorton,
with them Mineral Wells steers and left again—trail bossing a drive
for some dudes who’d been around town for a spell.’

‘
Did you see the dudes?’

‘
Nope, Colonel, they’d pulled out afore
I got there.’

‘
Where was Chisum driving to?’ asked
Dusty, although he could guess at the answer.

‘
Out to Fort Sumner. He’d left two days
afore I got there, the dudes followed him later.’

‘
Damn it to hell, Dustine!’ Goodnight
barked. ‘You know what this means?’

‘
Yes, sir. Chisum’s got near on a
week’s head start on us.’

‘
It means a heap more than that. Chisum
knows that trail as well as I do. He can stick to a route we’ll
have to follow and make sure that everything’s spoiled after he’s
passed and afore we reach it. We’ll never beat him to
Sumner.’

Dusty and the Kid exchanged
glances which showed their complete agreement with Goodnight’s
coldly logical summa
tion of the situation. With Chisum so far in the lead, they
could not hope to push their herd fast enough to pass and beat him
to their destination. Nor would Chisum hesitate to use foul means
to slow them down. Unscrupulous he might be, but he was also a
master cattleman and would know ways to effectively hinder a
following trail drive. However, Dusty, the Kid and Goodnight sprang
from stock which did not mildly admit defeat. So they gave thought
to how they might still beat Chisum to Fort Sumner despite his
advantages.

‘
I near on went after Chisum and gave
him a mite of trouble collecting his herd after the stompede,’ the
Kid remarked.

‘
Which stompede?’ Dusty
ejaculated.

‘
The one I was going to start,’ the Kid
said calmly. ‘Only I figured you white folks’d likely not think I
was playing fair. And that I’d best make speed to tell Colonel
Charlie what I’d learned.’

‘
Damned
Pehnane,’
Dusty grunted.
‘You’d be better hunting buffalo with—’

‘
Hey though!’ interrupted the Kid,
coming as close as the other two had ever seen to showing emotion.
‘If Chisum’s using your trail, Colonel, he’ll be going up the Clear
Fork of the Brazos and across to the headwaters of the Pecos, won’t
he?’

‘
That’s the trail Oliver Loving and I
blazed,’ Goodnight admitted bitterly. ‘And, knowing Chisum, that’s
the way he’ll go.’

‘
Only
you allus went up it earlier in the year,’ the Kid went
on.

‘
We did!’ Goodnight breathed, beginning
to guess what the dark youngster was leading up to.

‘
And you never had any Injun trouble
between the Clear Fork and the Pecos?’

‘
Not on that stretch.’

‘
Only this’s the time of
the year when the
Kweharehnuh
^xi
be making their big buffalo and
antelope hunting,’ the Kid went on. ‘If I know them, which I figure
I do, they’ll not take kind to having a damned great herd of cattle
drove through their hunting grounds.’

‘
That’s for sure,’ Dusty
agreed. ‘Which only makes things worse for us. Even if he manages
to sneak his cattle through, Chisum’ll make good and sure that
the
Kweharehnuh’re
all
riled up by the time we get there.’

‘
So why go?’ said the Kid.

‘
Because there’s only one other way,’
Goodnight explained. ‘And it’d take us a damned sight longer to
head south and circle around the Staked Plains. We’d still not get
to Sumner on time.’

The Kid’s face was as gently
innocent as a church-pew full of well-behaved choirboys and his
voice mild as he said, ‘I wasn’t figuring on going
’round
the Staked
Plains.’

For a long moment neither Dusty nor Goodnight
spoke. Taken any way a man looked at it, the Kid had made a mighty
startling—some would even say, considering his knowledge of the
terrain involved—even crazy suggestion. The Staked Plains were a
rolling, arid, semi-desert area between the South Concho and Pecos
Rivers. Baked by the heat, parched for the want of water, the
stunted vegetation offered poor grazing and little shade for the
cattle and many hazards existed along the route they would be
forced to follow. Under no circumstances could it be termed the
kind of country into which a trail boss would willingly direct his
herd.

At last Goodnight let out a long
breath and said,
‘It’s near on ninety-six miles from the South Concho to the
Pecos, Kid. With nothing but spike grass, horned toads and gila
monsters from one side to the other.’

‘
I knowed that all along,’
the Kid answered. ‘Back when I was a button with the
Pehnane,
I hunted desert
sheep around it.’

‘
We’ll not be hunting
around it, we’ll be trailing cattle
across,’
Goodnight pointed out. ‘There’s not
much drinking water, but plenty of alkali and salt lakes scattered
about. Let a thirsty herd get just a teensy smell of one of ’em,
and there’d be a stompede that nothing could stop. And any steer
that drinks from one of them lakes’ll be buzzard bait in twenty
minutes.’

‘
I know that, too,’ the Kid
admitted.

For all his words, Goodnight was clearly
giving the suggestion his close consideration. Watching his uncle,
Dusty could almost follow the other’s train of thought. Novel,
wild, impractical though the Kid’s idea might have sounded at first
hearing, it was possibly their only chance of beating Chisum to
Fort Sumner. The very nature of the animals in the herd made that
so.

Unlike the pampered beef breeds
that would follow them, the Texas longhorns lived an almost
completely natural existence. Left to forage for themselves upon
the unfenced ranges, they had over the generations developed the
survival instincts of wild animals. In nature only the fittest
survive. So any longhorn that reached maturity was perfectly
capable of standi
ng up to hardships and the rigors of climatic
conditions.

Maybe, just maybe, the
Kid
had
offered a solution to Goodnight’s problem. Crossing the Staked
Plains would be desperately risky, but better than no chance at
all. No Texan ever cared to go down without fighting.

‘
Damn it!’ Goodnight growled. ‘I’d hate
like hell for Chisum and that slimy cuss Hayden to lick me this
easy.’

‘
And me,’ Dusty agreed. ‘Especially
after they cost me the price of two new Stetsons.’

‘
Two?’ grinned the Kid. ‘Don’t tell me
that you lost that one you bought after them fellers shot up your
old woolsey?’

‘
Somebody put a hole in the new one,’
Dusty explained, ignoring the suggestion that he would wear a
cheap, poor quality ‘woolsey’ hat. ‘You haven’t got kin around
here, have you?’

‘
Damned if
I
don’t start talking
Comanche soon!’ Goodnight groaned. ‘Kid, if you could find each of
those lakes afore we come to it, we could point the cattle up-wind
until we get by and they won’t smell the water.’