Then, on the fourth day, we saw red dust boiling up ahead of us like low-hanging clouds. And as we got closer we could hear the bawling of cattle and the hoarse cursing of trail hands. At last we pulled up on a small rise and looked down on the constant stream of animals and men. It didn't look like an easy way to get to Kansas, but it was the best way for us. The law didn't bother trail herds. The big ranchers and cattle buyers saw to that. Their job was to get cattle to the railheads in Kansas, and they weren't particular about the men they hired, as long as they got the job done.
“Well, Pappy?” I said.
Pappy shook his head. “This is still dangerous country. Probably those cattle were gathered around Uvalde. They'll travel along the eastern line of army posts until they get to Red River Station. We'll push on east and catch a herd coming up the Brazos.”
So we headed east and north, skirting the main trails until we got to Red River Station. The Station was a wild, restless place, milling with bawling cattle, and wild-eyed trail bosses trying to keep their herds in check until their time came to make the crossing. Herds from all over Texas gathered here to make their push through Indian Territory—shaggy brush cattle from along the Nueces, as wild and murderous as grizzlies; scrawny, hungry-looking steers all the way from Christi; fat, well-fed ones from the Brazos. Wild cattle and the near-wild men that drove them, all took advantage of the Station's limited facilities to break the monotonous, fatiguing routine of trail life.
The only building there was a long, cigar-box-shaped log hut along the river bank, and Pappy and I made for it. There was no sign of police or cavalry, and, when I mentioned it to Pappy, he laughed dryly.
“They wouldn't do any good here. In the first place, it would take a regiment of cavalry and the whole damn ate police force to make an impression on a bunch of drovers. Anyway, all a man has to do is jump across the river and he's in Indian Territory where the police couldn't follow him.”
There was a long bar inside the Station's one building, where men stood two deep waiting for their wildcat whiskey at two bits a drink. There was gambling in the jack of the place, and half-breed saloon girls moving among the customers, promoting one kind of deal or another. Pappy and I waited at the bar until the bartender got around to us.
“Well, son, what do you think of it?”
“I'm not sure,” I said. “I never saw anything like it before.”
Pappy grinned slightly. “Wait until you see Abilene.” He picked up a bottle and we went to a table in the back of the place. It felt good to sit down in a chair for a change, instead of a saddle. I didn't feel sleepy. You got the idea that nobody ever slept in a place like this. There was too much excitement for that.
I said, “Do you think we'll be safe here?”
“As safe as we'd be anywhere,” Pappy said. “As long as we don't overdo it. I'll look around and pick out a herd to hook up with before long. Abilene beats this place. Besides, the marshal there is a friend of mine.”
For the past four days, I hadn't had time to think. And now I was too tired to think. The fight with the cavalry seemed a long way in the past. It was hard to believe that it had happened.
We stayed at Red River Station that night, spreading our blanket rolls on the ground, the way the drovers did, and the next day Pappy went to see about a job for us.
That was the day I met Bat Steuber, a wiry little remuda man from an outfit down on the Brazos. A remuda man, I figured, might be able to rustle up some grain for Red and that big black of Pappy's, if he was handled right.
The way to handle him, it turned out, was with whiskey. I bought him three drinks of wildcat with Pappy's money and he couldn't do enough for me. He took me down to where the outfit was camped and got some shelled corn out of the forage wagon. Or rather, he was about to get the corn, when a man came up behind the wagon and cut it short.
“The boss says look after the horses,” the man said.
He was a big man, his shoulders and chest bulging his faded blue shirt. His eyes were red-rimmed from riding long days in the drag, and his mouth was tight, looking as if he hadn't smiled for a long time.
Bat Steuber said, “Hell, Buck, I finished my shift. It's your...”
The man cut him off again. “I said see about the horses.”
The voice cracked and Steuber jumped to his feet. “Sure, Buck, if you say so.”
The man watched vacantly as Steuber went back to the rear where the remuda was ringed in; then he turned to me. I had a crazy idea that I had seen the man before, but at the same time I knew I hadn't. There was something about him that was familiar. His eyes maybe. I had seen eyes like those somewhere, clear, and blue, and deadly. He wore matched .44's converted, the same as mine, and I didn't have to be told that he knew how to use them. There are some things you know without having it proved to you.
“What's your name, kid?” he asked flatly.
“Cameron,” I said. “Talbert Cameron. I don't think I caught yours.”
He looked as if he hadn't heard me. “You're the kid that rode in with Pappy Garret yesterday, ain't you?”
He was asking a lot of questions, in a country where it wasn't polite to ask a stranger too many questions.
But I said, “That's right.”
I thought something happened to those eyes of his. He said flatly, “When you see Pappy, tell him I'm looking for him to kill him.”
For a moment, I just stood there with my back against the wagon wheel. He said it so quietly and matter-of- factly that you wondered afterward if he had spoken at all.
I tried to keep my voice as level as his. “Don't you think that'll be kind of a job? Men have tried it before, I hear.”
