the Man from the Broken Hills (1975) (6 page)

It was no wonder we had found no cattle. Somebody was deliberately driving them away from us. Occasionally they let the cattle drift while they rounded up more, until at the end of what was obviously several days' work they had made a gather of at least a hundred head.

"They drive them far," Fuentes said, "but I am puzzled. If they wish to steal them, why not drive south, no?"

A thought came to me. "Maybe they do not plan to steal them, Fuentes. Maybe they just hope to keep us from sellin' them. If we don't get them to the roundup, they won't be sold."

"And if they are not?"

"Then Rossiter won't have as much money as he may need. Maybe then he will lose the ranch, and maybe then somebody will buy it who knows there are more cattle than Rossiter thinks he has."

"It is a thought, amigo, a very likely thought, and it is another way of stealing, no? Senor Rossiter believes he has few cattle left, he is in trouble, he sells for little, when there are truly many cattle."

"There's one thing wrong, I think. Aside from your little red heifer, I didn't see the tracks of much young stuff. These are steers, some cows ... their hoofs are a little sharper ... but very few young ones."

We made dry camp in the hollow atop a ridge, a sheltered hollow that allowed us to have a fire after the darkness came, by using buffalo chips for fuel. It was a high ridge, with a good view, and after we had eaten we left the coffeepot on the coals and went out on the ridge to look over the country. Above was a vast field of stars, but we scarcely saw them. We looked for another kind of light ... a fire.

"You know this country best," I said. "Where do the ranches lie from here?"

He thought about that for an instant. "We are too far east, amigo. This is wild country where no man rides, only the Comanches or the Kiowa sometimes, and for them we must be wary.

"Back there lies the major's place ... It is the closest. Away to the horizon yonder is where Balch and Saddler are."

"And Harley?"

"He has no ranch, amigo, only a homestead, I think, a very small place. He is there." He pointed at a place nearer, yet still some distance off.

"Tony?" I pointed. "Look there!"

It was--and not more than a mile away--a fire. A campfire in wild country!

Chapter
6

This country was wild and lonely, and there was reason for it. East of us, the ranches were pushing west from Austin and San Antonio; and west of us, a few venturesome ranchers were trying to settle in the Panhandle country. But this area where we were was a hunting ground and traveling route of the Kiowas and the Comanches who raided into Mexico.

It was Apache country, too, mostly Lipans, I believed, but I was no expert on this area of Texas. Most of what I knew was campfire talk ... An army patrol had been massacred south of us two years before, and a freighter trying a new route toward Horsehead Crossing had been attacked, losing two men and all of his stock.

A rider for one of the Panhandle outfits had cut loose to go on his own and had tried settling down in this country. He lasted through one hardworking spring, fighting sleet, dust storms and late frost. The country killed his crops and the Indians got his cattle. When he tried riding out, leaving in disgust, they got him.

His cabin was somewhere south and east of us. Everybody had heard of it, but nobody knew exactly where it was. There were also rumors of some big caves in the country, but those we had yet to see.

Neither Fuentes nor me had any great itch to ride any closer to that campfire, although we were curious. If it was Kiowas, it was a good chance to lose hair, and the same for Lipans or Comanches. Anyway, we could ride down there tomorrow and, if they had pulled out, as seemed likely, we could put almost as much together by studying the remains of camp as if we actually saw it alive from close up.

A greenhorn might have tried slipping up on that camp. And if he was a good man at outguessing Indians, he might get close and get away ... but he might not, either. It never seemed wise to me to take unnecessary chances, and Fuentes was of the same mind. We were way past that kid stage of daring somebody, or doing something to show how big and brave we were.

That was for youngsters not dry behind the ears. We moved when we thought it right to move, and we fought when the chips were down, but we never went around hunting trouble.

After studying that fire we went back and turned in, letting our horses keep watch for us. We'd been lyin' there a while when I spoke out. "Tony, there's something wrong about this."

"Si?"His voice was sleepy, yet amused. "Somebody stealing cows, no?"

"Maybe ... All we've got is some idea that cows have been moved, and the cows that were moved are a mixed lot. On the other hand, the cattle that are missing are young stuff.

"The old stock somebody might try to steal. But the young stuff? It's mostly too young to sell with profit, which means that whoever has the young stuff intends to hold it a while ... And of course the young stuff hasn't been branded."

Fuentes said nothing and he was probably asleep, but it kept me awake a while, thinking about it. If all they wanted was young stuff, why had they broken the pattern and stolen older stock?

At daybreak we rolled out and had coffee over a buffalo-chip fire. We ate a little jerky and biscuit and then crawled into the saddle and left out of there. We taken a roundabout route and cut down into the bottom where we'd seen the cattle.

There was quite a bit of timber down there, and some rough, broken country. We saw no cattle at first, then a scattering of stuff, most of it wearing Stirrup-Iron brands. There was a sprinkling of Spur stuff, too, and we started them drifting toward home ... knowing a few of them might keep going, but that we'd have to round up and push most of them.

We taken our time, scouting around as if hunting strays, but working closer to where the campfire had been. It was nigh onto two hours after sunrise when we came up on the camp.

It was deserted. A thin feather of smoke stood above the coals, which had been built with care not to let the fire get away. Two people had been in the camp, and they'd had two packhorses. One of the men carried a rifle with a couple of prongs on the butt plate that would kind of fit over the shoulder at the armpit. I'd seen another such gun some years back, and some fancy boys had them. I never cared for them myself, but it was easy to see that was his kind of gun, because wherever he put it down he left that mark in the ground.

Fuentes saw them, too. "We'll know him when we see him," he commented, dryly. "It isn't likely there's more than one like that in the country."

Two men, and they had camped here at least two days and possibly longer. There were other signs of camping, too, so the place had been used more than once. We saw a big old brindle steer with a white nose that would weight eighteen hundred easy. There were a couple of others with him, one an almost white long-horn cow with a splash of red along one hip.

Fuentes was starting to haze them back when I had an idea. "Tony, let's leave them."

"What?"

"Let's leave them and see what happens. You'd know that brindle steer or white cow anywhere, so let's just see where they show up."

He nodded. "Bueno, I think that's a good idea."

The truth was that we'd know every head we saw that day. A man working cattle develops a memory for them--and the crowd they run with, so when we started back we had more than twenty head for our ride. It took some doing, like always, but it helped that they were headed back to their home range ... even though their range was nowhere as good as what we were leaving.

Riding gives a man time to think and to look. A man riding wild country has busy eyes if he hopes to stay alive, but a cowhand has them naturally. He learns to spot trouble before he comes close to it, and his eyes can pick out a bogged steer or one with screwworms. A good horse will smell screwworms when a man can't see the steer for the brush, and he will locate cattle where a man can't see them.

It was hot, dusty riding, and the black flies hung about us in a swarm. We picked up two three-year-old steers on the drive back. They just saw our cattle and joined up, as cattle will, and Fuentes and me, knowing they would be spooky, kept clear of them.

We were almost back to the line-shack when we saw a rider.

"Ah!" Fuentes grinned. "Now you will see her!"

"Her?"

He gestured at the rider. "The major's daughter. Be careful, senor. Sometimes she thinks she is the major."

She came riding toward us on as pretty a gray gelding as you ever saw, riding sidesaddle on something I'd never seen before, a black patent-leather saddle. She wore a kind of riding habit in checkered black and white--a fine check--and a black hat, black polished boots and a white blouse.

She gave me a quick glance that missed nothing, I'd guess, and then nodded to Fuentes. "How are you, Tony?" She glanced at the cattle. "Any T Bar T stuff in there?"

"No, senorita, only Stirrup-Iron and Spur."

"Mind if I have a look?"

"Of course not, senorita."

"Just don't spook those two speckled three-year-olds," I suggested. "They're edgy."

She threw me a glance that would have cut a wide swath at haying time. "I've seen cattle before!"

She rode around our gather, studying them, and mostly they paid her no mind. Then she cut in close to those steers and they taken one quick look at the sun shining off that patent-leather sidesaddle and they taken off, and it took some hot fast work by Tony an' me to hold our bunch together.

I pulled in close to her. "Ma'am, you go tell your papa to wipe behind your ears before you come out on the grass again, will you?"

Her face went white, and she took a cut at my face with her quirt. It was one of those woven horsehair-handled quirts in green and red, a pretty thing. But when she cut at my face with it, I just threw up my hand, caught the quirt and jerked it out of her hand.

She had a temper, that one did. She lost hold of the quirt, but she didn't stop. She grabbed for her rifle in its scabbard, and I pushed my horse alongside hers and put my hand over the butt of the gun so she couldn't draw it.

"Just take it easy," I said coolly. "You wouldn't shoot a man over something like this, would you?"

"Who the hell said I wouldn't?" she flared.

"You'd better also tell your papa to wash your mouth out with soap," I said. "That's no word for a lady to use."

She was sashaying around, trying to get away from me, but that little bay I was riding knew its business and was staying right close to her gray gelding. For three or four minutes we kicked up dust, sidling around on the prairie until she saw it was no use.

Maybe she cooled down a little. I don't rightly know, but she called over to Fuentes, who was sitting his saddle watching. "Fuentes, come and get this man away from me."

Tony walked his horse over and said, "I do not want you to shoot him, senorita. He is my compadre."

"I'll say this for you," I said. "You may have the devil of a temper, but you sure are pretty."

Her eyes narrowed a little. "The major will have you hung for this," she told me, "if the boys don't get to you sooner."

"Why don't you fight your own battles?" I asked. "You're a big girl now. No need to call on your papa to help you, or the big boys at the ranch."

"Stop calling him my papa!" she said angrily. "He's 'the Major!' "

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't know he was still in the army."

"He's not in the army!"

"Then he isn't a major, is he? I mean, he's a used-to-be major, maybe?"

She didn't know what to say to that. Defensively, she said, "He's the major! And he was a major ... in the Civil War!"

"Well, good for him. I knew a couple of them, up north. There was one used to clerk in a hotel where I stayed, and then I punched cows with a colonel up Wyoming way. Nice fellas, both of them."

My face was smooth, my voice bland. Suddenly she said, "I don't think I like you!"

"Yes, ma'am," I said politely, "I gathered that. When a girl comes after me with a quirt ... well, I sort of get the feeling she doesn't care for me. I'd say that wasn't really the romantic approach."

"Romance?" Her tone was withering. "Withyou ?"

"Oh, no, ma'am!Please ! Don't talk about romance with me! I'm just a drifting cowboy! Why, I'd never even think of romance with a daughter of the major!"

I paused. "Anyway, I never start courting a girl the first time I see her. Maybe the second time. Of course, that depends on the girl.

"You--" I canted my head on one side. "Well, maybe the third time ... or the fourth. Yes, I think so. The fourth time."

She swung her horse around, glaring at me. "You! You're impossible! Just wait! Just you wait!"

She dashed away, spurring her horse. Fuentes pushed his sombrero back on his head and looked woeful. "I think you are in big trouble, amigo. This one ... she does not like you, I think."

"I think, too," I said. "Let's get on with the cattle."

The two three-year-olds were gone, and neither of us were of a mind to follow or try to recover them. Besides, they'd be skittish now, and we'd be lucky to even get close.