'I'll rub him down, Boss. You better get a rubdown, too. This is a bad night to be out.'
Kirby agreed as he sloshed to the house and entered by the kitchen door. A pot of coffee simmered on the big range, and he drank a cup, standing in his underwear after he stripped and spread out his clothes to dry. He padded down the hall to his room, wincing when his bare feet hit the cold polished boards. His room was cold, too, a sticky wet cold. Wish Manuel had built a fire, he thought. Teeth beginning to chatter, he got an extra blanket and crawled into bed to get warm.
For a long time he lay quietly, his thoughts as cold as his body. The taste of a bad night was heavy in his mouth. I wish I'd never gone to town, he thought, as he listened to the patter of rain on the roof, the sound of water pouring through the spout into the big rain barrel beneath the window. Ma had said there was nothing like rain water to wash her hair, he remembered. Ma and Jen used to make hair washing day something of a ceremony. He could see them now, sitting in the sun, gray hair and red brown, making woman medicine. Warm at last, he was nearly asleep, despite his worry, when he realized that the sound of rain had stopped. Maybe I can't read weather signs, he thought. I would have sworn we were in for a two-day rain. Uneasy, he threw back the blankets and went to the window.
The lights of the bunkhouse across the big yard were nearly blotted out by great wet flakes of snow. What he could see of the ground and bunkhouse roof were already white. Winter had come to Wagon.
Hope this doesn't turn into an early blizzard, he thought. Doubt very much if anyone is ready for a howler this early. He shivered and returned to the warmth of his bed.
The sound of the triangle ringing in front of the cookhouse awakened him next morning, bringing him reluctantly from troubled sleep… from dreams that even now seemed almost real. He had dreamed of talking to Muddy about the weather… had fished with Bill at the big bend in the Clear, had once again held Jen in his arms. He tried to sleep again to shut out the misery. Failing, he went to the window and looked out into a day as gray and dismal as his thoughts. Sometime during the night the snow had stopped, but ground and buildings held nearly an inch of white stuff. Low, puffy clouds looked as if they might open and spill their contents again at any moment. Thank goodness there's no wind, he thought. He watched smoke rising straight up from the bunkhouse chimney.
Taking clean clothes from the closet he hurried to the warmth of the kitchen. Maria, cook and housekeeper since Wagon was started, turned golden brown pancakes in an iron skillet. He hurried into his clothes, unabashed at dressing before the old woman. After all, she had been the first to dress him and Bill in three-cornered pants.
Gruffly she greeted him. 'You take cold last night?' she asked. 'Your clothes not dry yet. You want I should fix…?'
He quickly interrupted the question. 'No, Maria, I don't need any cold remedy.' He shuddered at the thought of the taste of her homemade prescription for everything from stomachache to burned fingers. 'Fix me a couple of eggs to go with those pancakes, and I think I'll live.' His boots were not dry yet, and he went back to his room for another pair.
He was finishing his third cup of coffee when Josh Steuben, his foreman, stamped the snow off his boots and pushed open the kitchen door.
'Mornin', Kirby,' he said, shrugging out of his coat. He took the coffee Maria poured for him and joined Kirby at the table. 'Looks like summer is over,' he said.
'Sure does,' Kirby agreed. Josh is beginning to show his age, he thought. He watched, knowing regret, as his segundo's work-stiffened fingers closed gratefully about the hot coffee cup. Another good thing coming to an end. Wagon wouldn't be the same without Josh as ramrod.
'What's new this morning?' he asked.
'Nothing but the snow,' replied Josh. 'Sent a crew out early to drive the critters down from the east ridges. Rather they'd be closer to headquarters if we do have to haul hay. Don't rightly know what the weather's going to do.'
'Pretty early for a blizzard, but you never can tell in this country,' Kirby agreed. 'You going out?'
He shook his head. 'Waitin' for you,' he said. 'Held Curly and Ringo in, too. The Clear's risin' fast, Boss. Up a foot since first light. Must have been a whale of a rain up in the hills.'
Kirby smiled to himself at the foreman's choice of words. Only a little while ago he had called him boy or, on occasion, that danged kid. He waited for Josh to go on.
'There's a jag of beef down in the west bottom,' he said. 'If the river gets much higher, they'll be cut off. Thought maybe you'd want to ride down with us to take a look.'
Kirby knew a glow of pleasure at the words. He knew he wasn't needed. Josh would decide what to do with the cows anyway. The foreman was using the situation as an excuse to get Kirby to ride with them.
'Be with you as soon as I get a coat,' he replied. 'Have Curly or Ringo saddle the black stud. Haven't forked him in more than a week.'
Josh's weather-beaten grin was sheepish. 'Already have,' he admitted.
The snow had begun to melt by the time the four riders hit the river trail, making the going slippery. Kirby and Josh dropped far behind Curly and Ringo to avoid the mud thrown up by their horses' sliding feet. Kirby knew that Josh had something on his mind… that he wanted to talk to him alone. He waited for his oldest friend to break the silence.
At last Josh cleared his throat and asked awkwardly, 'What happened in Streeter last night, Boss? I was some worried before you rode in.'
Kirby told him. The planes in Josh's angular face grew more and more pronounced as he heard about the whole affair, with the exception of his conversation with Jen.
'Glad Muddy wasn't here to see it,' he said at last. 'Do you think Bill was bluffing?'
'That I don't know. Can't seem to figure him, he's changed so much. Can't figure either, where he thought to get the cash to buy Wagon, but he talked like a man with the money in his fist.'
'There's talk about that, Boss. Maybe you heard some of it.'
'About Bill's money,' Josh told him. 'He made a big deposit in the Streeter bank and another one in Galeyville. Said he got it when he sold some of his herd. Said he was goin' to sell out everything and restock with shorthorns. Big talk, blooded cattle and all.' He paused thoughtfully. 'Something's wrong, though. We know how many cows he got when Muddy divided Wagon. Hardly enough to account for the size of them deposits… seein' as how he's got a lot of cows left over.'
Kirby felt cold fingers up and down his spine at the foreman's words.
'Where do you figure he got it?' he asked.
Josh took off his battered Stetson and scratched his head. 'Well, boy, I hate to say it, but there's a heap of talk that cows missing from other brands could sort of get mixed up with the stuff Bill rebranded when he changed over from Wagon to Lazy B. He was in an all-fired hurry to get his new iron on the critters Muddy gave him. Now folks are wondering if missing Triangle, Rocking R, Acorn and other brands weren't with the stuff Bill sold and shipped out.'
'My gosh!' Kirby got out in a gasp. 'Josh, that's the same thing as rustling. My own brother. Surely no son of Muddy's could stoop so low. Josh, if it's true, I'll go across the Clear and gun him down like a yellow dog.'
'Take it easy, boy. No one has made any charges. Maybe no one will. He could have gotten the money some other way. You know how people are: they add two and two and sometimes get six for an answer.'
Kirby seized on Josh's words gratefully. 'Give the devil his due. There are some things that don't really add up. For one, his crew would know about anything crooked. Would they stand for it? And how did other brands get mixed in without someone driving them in?'
'There are angles,' Josh agreed. 'But let's look at it like other men do. Four of the boys who went with Bill when Wagon broke up come askin' me for their jobs back. Wouldn't say why… just that they'd made a mistake. The crew Bill's got now are almost every one strangers to Streeter country. He's even hired some fancy guns… you seemed to bump into one of 'em last night.'
'Maybe I'm talkin' too much, but we may as well look at this thing, since we've got it out in the open. Bill has been seen a lot lately with Hub Dawes. You know him; runs a small outfit up in the hills. Cowmen have been suspicious of Dawes for a long time, but no one ever tried to prove he was actually stealing. Anyhow, the Lazy B joins Dawes' spread in some pretty rough country. It would be easy to hold a bunch of stolen stuff in the hills, and then at the right time run 'em in with Lazy B critters; say about rebranding time. Before anyone could get suspicious, that part of the herd could be sold.' Josh paused and looked at Kirby's drawn face. Taking a deep breath,
