Hell on the Prairie (4 page)

“
You got wages coming at railhead,
boy. I’ll foot you the Remington and take it from your
pay.”

Billy reached for the Remington.

“
Model 1858 Army,” said the gun hawk.
“Been converted to .46 rimfire. Damn good piece.” He picked up the
Remington and held it out, butt first, to Billy. “Box a’ fifty
cartridges comes with the gun.”

“
Sweet deal,” Brodrick
said.

Billy took the big Remington. Its weight
felt reassuring in his hand. He looked at Brodrick. “Think I
should, boss?”

“
Better deal than a three-day drunk,”
Brodrick said. “Cowboys spend their pay on rotgut whiskey at trail
end anyway. You all’d be that much better off with the Remington
and bullets. But it’s your call.”

Billy nodded. “I’ll do it if this here gun
man can be trusted. Boss, you say he got these pieces legal-like
and they’ll not blow up in my face when I pull the trigger?”

“
You can trust Hoss, boy,” Brodrick
said.

“
Done,” Billy said. He thrust the
Remington behind his waistband and held his hand out. “Bullets,” he
said.

The old man fished around in his wagon and
came up with a box of shells for the Remington. He gave them to
Billy. “Ten bucks, Brodrick,” he said.

“
Later,” Brodrick said. “You know I’m
good for it.”

While the man Brodrick called Hoss tried to
sell guns to other cowboys, Billy took his food and the bullets
back toward the chuckwagon. “Gonna use the tailgate for a minute,”
he told the Old Woman, and set the box of bullets down while he
wolfed the beans and beef and sourdough bread.

“
Taking my cookin’ space awful
generous, aincha?” The Old Woman shifted his chaw and spat a stream
of tobacco juice to one side.

Billy finished chewing and swallowed.
“Mighty fine grub,” he said.

“
Shee-it. Y’all’d josh an old man to
death.”

“
Got me a gun,” Billy said. “Bought
and paid for. Well, almost paid for anyways.” He put the plate down
and pulled the Remington out. “See?”

The Old Woman touched the Remington with a
gnarled forefinger. “Model 1858,” he said. “Allus did like a
Remington gun. They’s built to last ’til the cows come home.”

Billy used the edge of his neckerchief to
wipe a bit of dust off the barrel. “Not bad, I’d say. Not bad.”

“
I got a piece of good leather,” the
Old Woman said. “Reckon a man could make a purty fair holster with
it.”

“
Ain’t got no money, Old
Woman.”

“
You got strong arms and a good back,
though. You get me firewood when you ain’t riding drag, and I’ll
give you the leather and let you use my awl, too.”

“
Done,” Billy said. Working for stuff
was nothing new to him. He scraped the last of the beans off his
plate and into his mouth, popped the last hunk of sourdough in with
the beans and started chewing.

The Old Woman rummaged around in the
chuckwagon’s storage cupboards and came up with a rough-cut piece
of leather so old it was the color of chewing tobacco. “Looks like
shit,” he said, “but its still good leather.” He snapped the
leather a couple of times to rid it of dust, then wiped it on the
seat of his pants.

***

Billy turned fifteen the day Brodrick’s herd
swam Red River out of Texas and into the Indian Nations.

Brodrick crossed the river first, riding a
big black horse and testing the depth of the water and footing on
the bottom. “Roll ’em,” he hollered as the black humped up and out
of the river back on the Texas side.

“
Heeyah. Come on. Git on there!”
Shouts came from all sides, and lariats whacked against the
cowboys’ legs as they pushed the reluctant cattle into the river.
The chuckwagon took the ferry across back at Red River Station,
east from where the herd crossed.

By the time Billy and the other drag rider
reached the riverbank, the herd stretched from Texas to the
Nations. More than two thousand head of longhorns pushed through
the muddy Red. The lead steers clambered out of the river on the
far side about the time the drag riders pushed the stragglers into
the water on the Texas side. For a moment Billy pulled paint to a
stop and watched the herd make its way across, a great undulating
beasty looking thing that broke up into individual steers as the
beeves reached firm ground at the northern bank.

“
Heeyah. Heeyah.” Billy slapped a
lagging steer on the rump with his coiled lariat. The reluctant
animal jumped at the slap and suddenly found itself in the water.
Other steers moved north, so the laggard did, too.

Reckon Willis came back along the line of
cattle from his swing rider position. He hollered to Billy. “Only
gotta swim a couple a hunnert feet. If your paint gits to having
trouble, slip off and just hang on. If’n he gets ahead of you, grab
aholt of his tail. Got it?”

“
I’ll make it, Reckon,” Billy hollered
back. He just wished he was as confident as he thought he sounded.
Still, even as the tail end of the herd moved away from the Texas
bank, Billy sat paint, glued to the spot. There was a lot of water
in the river, more water than Billy had ever seen. At home, there’d
not been enough water in one place to learn to swim, and now he had
to swim paint, and maybe himself, across Red River. A tremor ran
through his body.

“
Hey!”

Billy’s eyes focused on Reckon Willis, who
beckoned him with a swinging arm.

“
Getchor cracker ass across the goldam
river,” Reckon hollered.

Billy took a deep breath. He chucked paint
with his heels and the horse obediently stepped into the water,
following the cows he’d been tailing for so many miles. Billy just
hung on.

Twenty-five or thirty yards out, the water
was up to paint’s belly, him standing no more than fourteen hands
or so.

The Old Woman told Billy to leave his boots
and his Remington in the chuckwagon when he carried an armful of
firewood over before breakfast. “Water’s hard on iron and leather,”
the Old Woman said. You leave them things here.” Billy did as he
was told, and now, with water coming up around his thighs, he was
glad he did.

Long before paint reached the north bank, he
was neck deep in the muddy water of Red River. The little horse
kept his nose above water and his hind feet on the bottom in the
deepest parts. Billy slid out of the saddle and let the paint tow
him as he kept a hand on the saddle horn. When he could tell the
horse had all four legs on the river bottom, he pulled himself back
into the saddle.

Once in the water, the steers seemed
interested only in following the press of cattle ahead of them, so
drag riders could do the same. Still, Billy heaved a sigh of relief
as paint humped himself up onto the sand flat leading to the north
bank.

“
Hustle them dogies along.” The shout
came from Reckon Willis. “Boss says there’s a good flat to bed down
on about three miles north. Yeehaw! We’re outta Texas, bound for
Kansas, and they ain’t nobody ta git in our way!”

Billy doffed his hat and waved it at Reckon
to show he’d heard. “Come on, paint,” he said. “We got work to
do.”

The cattle trailed water so the miasma of
dust that defined the world of the drag rider didn’t materialize
until Red River was out of sight behind them.

Brodrick never pushed his cattle more than
about ten miles a day. Any faster and the steers ended up at the
railhead little more than skin and bones. Ten to a dozen miles gave
the herd time to graze before bedding down. “Keeps meat on them
bones,” Brodrick said.

Billy had enough time to scavenge a couple
of armloads of wood for the Old Woman before Brodrick called him
over. “You got the midnight watch,” he said, “you and Mitch.”

“
Gotcha,” Billy said. He dumped the
wood and dug out the leather from the chuckwagon cupboard. He
measured it against the Remington and used his Barlow knife to cut
the leather to shape. He had a leather thong in his warbag, and he
used that to lace the soon-to-be holster together. He’d left a long
shank on the back side so he could put slits in it, fit the laced
holster through, and have a natural place for his belt to
go.

After dark, drovers who weren’t on night
duty gathered at the fire. Brodrick didn’t allow drinking on a
drive. “Cows ’n booze don’t mix,” he said. That meant yarning after
dark and drinking cup after cup of Arbuckle’s coffee.

“’
Member that gal Rose down to San
Antone,” said Long Tom. Billy’d heard his name was Justin Thomas,
but everyone called him Long Tom because he had the longest peeder
anyone ever saw. Second cousin to Brodrick’s stallion, they said.
“I remember her oh-so-well. Rose got her name ’cause she always
patted herself down with rose water before . . . well,
before.”

“
Before what?” chorused half a dozen
drovers. They knew the story.

“
Well, just before. Made a man just
wanna get plumb nekkid before he got down to business.”

“
Plumb?” one of the younger drovers
asked, wide-eyed. His name was Alfred Duncan, but for some reason
everybody called him Sonny.

“
Plumb, stick-stark nekkid. An’ you
know what? Rose’d take a washcloth and a basin of water and wash
all the trail dust offa ya. Ever’ bit, ever’where.”

“
Gol,” Sonny said, fingering his
crotch.

“
Gol is right,” Long Tom said. “Ain’t
nothing like rolling around in a bed of roses with a purty gal who
smells like roses all over, and I
do
mean all over.”

“
You sniffed her
everywhere?”

“
Son, they ain’t much about Lilac Rose
that this ol’ son don’t know. Once I get to San Antone, she’s the
onliest gal I see.”

Billy didn’t say anything, but he
purely wondered what it would be like to be with a woman
that
way. He picked up his saddle
blanket and saddle and lugged them over to the remuda. Lorenzo
Gomez wrangled for Brodrick, and the boss wouldn’t stand for any
ragging on Lorenzo because of his Mexicanness. “Best man I ever
seen with cayuses,” Brodrick said. “Don’t want any of you be coming
down on Lorenzo because he looks Mexican. His folks’s been in Texas
longer’n any of us. Treat’im with respect, dammit.”

“
Noches
,”
Lorenzo said.

“
Need to catch the roan,” Billy said.
“Midnight watch tonight, n’ she’s the best night horse in my
string.”

“
Go get him, Billy Boy. He waits
patiently, I think.”

“
Gracias
,”
Billy said, shaking out a loop in his lariat. He stepped into the
rope corral that kept the remuda from straying, and tossed the loop
over the head of the roan he called Berry.

The roan followed meekly, good-natured horse
that she was, even though Lorenzo called her “he.” Billy had picked
a soft-looking place to sleep, and –as all drovers did –he tied
Berry to a peg he’d driven into the ground before he bedded down.
When he didn’t have night duty, he put down the saddle blanket to
sleep on and covered up with his slicker, but the night was clear
and the weather balmy, so Billy just curled up on the ground and
went to sleep, using his arm for a pillow. The Remington lay in its
new holster, near at hand.

While Billy slept, his right hand lying next
to Berry’s peg, six men on big powerful horses approached the herd
from the wooded hills to the west. The herd’s night riders, who
crossed paths north and south as they circled the bedded cattle,
were out of sight. The dark riders spread until they were fifteen
to twenty feet apart. Each carried a heavy saddle blanket in one
hand. Occasionally starlight would glance from the riders’ eyes,
giving them a peculiarly sinister appearance.

“
Ready.” The order came almost too
quietly to be heard. The riders shook out the blankets and held
them to the herd side of their horses with both hands.

“
Now!”

As one, the riders popped the blankets and
hollered. In an instant, the herd was on its feet and running.

3

The thunder of more than two thousand cattle
on the run could not be mistaken for any other sound. The rumble of
running hooves no sooner reached Billy’s body than he threw off the
slicker, grabbed the Remington and jumped to his feet, pulled
Berry’s reins free, and leaped aboard. On the run, he laced his
belt through the Remington’s holster and let it hang naturally.
“Move it, Berry babe.” Billy slapped the mare on the rump with his
hat and he took out after the spooked cattle like a scared
coyote.

Walt Brodrick came alongside, his black
stallion easily keeping pace with Berry. “Along the river, kid,” he
hollered. “Keep ’em headed north.”

“
Right-o,” Billy hollered back.
Brodrick twicked the black’s reins, and horse and rider disappeared
into the dust cloud that followed the stampeding steers.

Berry and Billy headed down the south side
of the stampede at a dead run. Even a small Texas horse like Berry
was much faster than a longhorn steer. Billy began to gain on the
cattle. He pulled his lariat from its ties on the saddle fork.

Reckon Willis came up beside Billy, the brim
of his hat pushed back against the crown by the wind. “Gotta turn
’em,” he shouted. “Push ’em west! Make ’em turn to the west!” He
grabbed his hat from his head and slapped it against his horse’s
rump. It jumped ahead with a burst of speed.

There seemed to be riders ahead. Billy
squinted, trying to see through the cloud of dust that hung over
the herd. Big men, they were, on big horses. They rode in a line,
cutting through the front end of the stampede.