“No use running weight off twenty head, huh? I knew a trail boss one time who used to haul a tank wagon along and water his stock a mile outside of Dodge.”
Roping Sally laughed and took a healthy bite from the cut plug the storekeeper had handed her. She said, “I know all the tricks of the trade, but I fight fair. I figured you for a gent who knew his way around a cow. You rope dally or tie-down?”
“Tie-down. I value my fingers too much to mess with that fancy Mexican dally-roping.”
“Tie-down’s too rough on the critters. I’m a dally roper, myself.”
“You must be good. I notice you’ve got ten fingers.”
“‘Course I’m good. That’s why they call me Roping Sally. If you’re out there when we ride in this evening, I’ll show off a mite with my border reata. The Indian kids get a kick out of watching me, too.”
Her boast gave Longarm an idea, but he didn’t mention it. He said, “I’m staying at the agency, so we’ll meet around sundown, Roping Sally.”
Then he finished buying his smokes and went to see if the dead Indian was back together yet.
Chapter 5
The funeral of Real Bear took about fifteen minutes, Christian time, and maybe twelve hours, Indian time. Longarm didn’t hang around to see the Indian ceremony. Calvin Durler read a short service over the open grave in the little burial plot a mile from the agency and Nan Durler threw a clod of earth and a handful of wildflowers on the pine planks of the chief’s coffin.
Then, as the three whites moved back, a Dream Singer called Stars Were Falling moved to the head of the grave with a rattle and started chanting as some kneeling squaws with shawled heads began to wail like coyotes.
Longarm and his host and hostess went back to the buckboard. Calvin drove back to the agency house with Nan at his side and Longarm sitting in the wagon bed, his boots dangling over the tail gate.
He’d told Cal the cattle were coming, so, after dropping Nan off at the house, the two men saddled up and rode in the other direction to the fenced-in quarter-section in which the reservation herd was supposed to be kept.
Calvin Durler sat his bay mare morosely as be tallied the small herd in the big pasture, muttering, “Damn. I’m supposed to have thirty-seven head. I only make it thirty-six. I’m missing one. I’m missing the damned kid who’s supposed to be watching, too.”
Longarm swept his eyes over the nibbled stubble of buffalo grass and said, “I see a break in the fence, over to the left of your windmill and watering tank. What are you missing?”
“I just told you. A cow,” Durler said impatiently.
“They’re all cows, damn it. Are you short a calf, a heifer, a steer, or what?”
“Hell, Longarm, I just count ‘em. I don’t know ‘em personal.”
“Yeah, you’re overgrazing too. Takes more than five acres a head of this short grass to graze longhorn. You’re treating them like a dairy herd instead of range cows.”
“Look, it’s the only way I know. How would you do it if you were me?”
“You’ve got a water tank to keep them from straying more than a few miles. I’d get rid of that foolish barbed wire and let ‘em at the grass all about.”
“Then how would we catch ‘em when it comes time to slaughter?”
“Round ‘em up, of course. Don’t you have any Indians who know how to drive critters in off the range?”
“I can’t get ‘em to watch the fool cows while they’re fenced, and to tell the truth, I don’t know much more than they do about working these spooky cattle.”
“I see some that ain’t branded, too. You do need help and that’s a fact.” Before Calvin could defend himself, Longarm squinted off to the east and said, “I see twenty—no, twenty-one head coming out to join you.”
Durler looked across the quarter-section and nodded, saying, “That’s Roping Sally and two of her hands with the new stock I ordered. Wait till you meet her. She is purely something.”
“We met in town this afternoon. Sure sits a horse nice andBoy, look at that, will you? The herd smelled strangers and was about to spill before she cut and milled the leader. That gal knows her cows!”
“She’s crazy, too. Nan says it’s not natural for a gal to dress like a man and ride astride like that. Nan’s scared of her. Thinks she might be one of those funny gals who are queer for their own kind.”
Longarm didn’t answer, not knowing about Roping Sally one way or the other. The cowgirl spotted the break in the fence and, thinking in the saddle, swung the leaders for it with a slap of her coiled leather reata. Her two helpers swung in behind the stragglers without being ordered, and together, the three of them worked the little herd through the gap to join the others.
Roping Sally called out something to one of her hands and the man dismounted to repair the fence as Roping Sally loped her big buckskin their way, her long hair streaming from under her Stetson as she shook out a community loop from her coil. She was halfway to them as she twirled the braided leather rope above her head, letting the loop grow larger and larger as she came. Then she flicked her wrist and the loop dropped vertically in front of her like a huge hoop. The well-trained buckskin leaped through it without breaking stride as she twisted in the saddle and recovered her loop with a wild whoop of sheer animal joy.
Durler laughed and said, “Every time she does that I keep saying it ain’t possible. How in hell does she do that without hanging up in her own rope?”
Longarm said, “It’s not easy. Pretty as hell, though.”
Roping Sally reined in near them, reeling in her reata like a fishing line with a series of blurred wrist movements and slapping the coil back in place neatly as she called out, “I found a stray I suspicioned was yours, Cal. Likely a half-weaned calf looking for his mama and halfway to town when he run into us. You gonna take my word on the
