“What about wild horses?”
“Take ‘em back to Pyramid Lake,” Longarm said. “They’ve served their purpose.”
George thought hard about that for a few minutes, and then he shook his head. “I go when you go,” he said before he lay back down in his blankets and immediately began to snore.
Chapter 12
Longarm did not sleep particularly well that night. He couldn’t help but wonder if Dean would recover enough to come looking to even the score. Longarm had rarely delivered such a savage beating, but he’d been in a fighting mood and he’d wanted to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was not quite the bumpkin that his clothes and easygoing manner had initially suggested.
Randy, of course, would tell his father and others about Longarm’s supposed imprisonment in Yuma, and Longarm thought that someone in the gang might eventually check that out and discover it to be pure fabrication. But by then, Longarm was confident that he would already have broken the Killion gang and put them permanently behind bars.
“Still hanging around, huh?” Randy said, coming over to join them bright and early the next morning. “I thought you had enough sense to get out of Helldorado while the getting was good.”
“Maybe your father will change his mind and decide to buy our mustangs after all.”
“Not a chance.”
“You did.”
“Even you admitted that my buckskin isn’t a mustang.” Randy was dragging a saddle. “You fellas going to sleep all day, or are you going to help me saddle and shake out the buckskin?”
“If there’s a breakfast in it for the trouble, we’ll help you,” Longarm said, looking at George Two Ponies, who nodded in agreement. George and Longarm had not eaten well since leaving Pyramid Lake.
“Fair enough,” Randy said. “I was hoping one of you was handy enough with a rope to catch him and then help hold him steady while I cinch him up good and tight.”
“I forgot to bring a rope,” Longarm said, “and so did George.”
“I’ll get one for you,” Randy said, dropping his saddle and wheeling around to march toward the town’s livery.
“Why hurry?” George asked. “Eat first, then ride buckskin.”
“That would be my choice too,” Longarm said. “Only we aren’t calling the turns. Let’s just do things his way.”
George nodded with reluctant agreement. He looked at Longarm with pity and then asked, “Can’t rope horse?”
“No,” Longarm said a little defensively. “I’ve never claimed to be a cowboy or a mustanger. How good are you with a rope?”
“Pretty damned good.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Longarm said. “It wouldn’t ring very true if we’re supposed to be mustangers and neither one of us could even lasso a half-tame horse in a small corral.”
“Yeah, I suppose not.”
Randy came back while Longarm was tying up his bedroll and pulling on his boots. He looked at the kid and said, “How come you’re so eager to get that buckskin rode?”
“I just like to take care of my business.”
Randy handed the lariat to George, who shook it out and took a few practice whirls. “Too damned stiff,” the Indian complained.
“It’s a good grass rope,” Randy argued.
George finished pulling on his own boots. He jerked his sagging pants up and tightened his belt, then shook out a loop and squeezed through the corral poles. Almost at once the mustangs began to mill nervously about. Longarm had seen enough cowboys rope horses to know that they usually threw an overhand loop that sort of flipped up and then dropped down on the head of a horse, often the one hiding somewhere in the rear of the band.
But George held his loop lower, and as he made his way into the center of the pen, the mustangs began to race around and around him in a panic-driven circle. Suddenly, a clear shot to the buckskin materialized and George’s arm darted forward as quick as the head of a snake. Longarm saw that he was throwing an underhanded catch loop called the mangana that had been adopted from the Mexican vaqueros and was so difficult to throw correctly that it marked an expert roper.
The mangana loop snaked out about knee high and then, even as Longarm watched with admiration, the loop captured the buckskin’s forefeet and tightened like the jaws of a bear trap. George threw his hip into the rope and planted his moccasins.
The buckskin’s forefeet were jerked completely under its body and the animal did a somersault and landed on its back, its head slamming to the earth. While it was dazed and had the wind knocked from its body, George ran forward and quickly tied the animal’s forelegs to its hind legs yelling, “Saddle!”
Randy brought the saddle over, and they loosened the ropes enough so that the buckskin could climb shakily to its feet. The dazed animal tried to run, but George used his rope to drop the buckskin hard to its knees.
“Got it!” Randy said, tightening the cinch and leaping into the saddle as George allowed the buckskin to climb back to its feet.
“Quirt him!” George yelled.
But Randy said, “If he isn’t of a mind to buck and raise hell, I’m not going t-“
