A Lone Star Christmas

place in about half an hour so we can talk about it.”

“I will, Clay. And thank you,” Big Ben said. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

There were two clapboard bunkhouses on the ranch, both painted white. There were twenty bunks in each of the bunkhouses, ten on each side. The inside walls were of wide, rip-sawed, unpainted boards, papered over with newspapers. In the time he had been here, Tom Whitman had read just about every article and every advertisement on every wall. He had committed the one behind his bunk to memory.

W. GLITSCHKA

WHOLESALE AND RETAIL

GROCER

110 Houston St.

FRESH EGGS

GREENS AND VEGETABLES

FRUITS

PROVISIONS OF ALL KINDS

There were two wood-burning stoves in the bunkhouse, one at each end. Though it was cool now in early November, it wasn’t cold enough to keep both of them going, so for now only one was being used, and that was as much to keep the pot of coffee warm as it was to heat the bunkhouse.

At the moment, Tom was lying on his bunk with his hands laced behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. At the far end of the bunkhouse, Dusty McNally was playing the guitar and crooning a cowboy song, one that Tom had heard many times being sung to the cattle. Several of the other cowboys were gathered around Dusty.

The memories came back. No, they didn’t come back, the memories never left; they were always there, just beneath the surface, a part of him, like an awareness of night and day, heat and cold.

He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he walked out onto the balcony. His knees were so weak that he had to grab hold of the banister to keep from falling. He looked down at his hands and saw the blood.

Why did he do it? Why? He could wash his hands, but the blood would not go away. He thought of a scene from Lady MacBeth. “Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

Now, as he lay here in his bunk, Tom raised his hands to stare at them.

“Tom! Are you in here?” Clay’s shout brought Tom out of his reverie, and he sat up on his bed.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Dusty? Mo?” Clay called.

“Yeah, we’re here,” Dusty answered.

“Put down that guitar, Dusty, and you, Tom, and Mo come on over to my house for a few minutes, will you? We’ve got a job ahead of us and I’ll need to discuss it with you.”

Dusty hung his guitar up on a nail above his bunk, and then he, Tom, and Mo followed Clay back to the foreman’s house. Maria greeted them warmly when they arrived and, a moment later, all four of them were doing a balancing act with a cup of coffee in one hand and a small plate with a piece of freshly baked apple pie in the other.

There was a knock on the door and when Maria opened it, Dalton stepped in, with a big smile on his face.

“Pa says you’re taking me to Dodge to help bring back the herd he’s buying,” Dalton said.

“That’s right,” Clay replied.

“Hot dog. I’m going to enjoy this.”

“I’m filling the others in on the drive,” Clay said. “Get yourself a cup of coffee and a piece of pie and find a place to sit.”

“You can sit there, I will bring it to you,” Maria said.

“Thank you, Maria,” Dalton replied, sitting on the chair she offered.

“We’ll get underway day after tomorrow,” Clay said. “So get all your gear ready and throw it in the hoodlum wagon. And don’t forget to take warm coats and a couple of blankets. It’s not that bad now, but it’ll be the middle of December before we get back and it’s likely to get pretty cold.”

“Tom, I’m going to make you my Segundo, my second in command.”

“Why me?” Tom asked. “Dusty and Mo have both been here longer.”

“I’ve already spoken with them,” Clay said. “And they agree.”

“You are smart, like the officers I served under during the war,” Dusty said. “I like having someone smart to make the decisions.”

“That’s right,” Mo said. “We both agree.”

“Are you all right with that?” Clay asked.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Tom said. “I’ll try not to let anyone down.”

“What about horses?” Dusty asked.

“Pick out three apiece,” Clay said. “Get three good ones, you’ve all been here long enough to know what horses will fare the best. Mo, how about you picking out four mules, two for the chuck wagon and two for the hoodlum wagon?”

“Alright,” Mo said. “Who’ll be driving those?”

“Maria is going to drive the chuck wagon. She’ll be cooking for us.”

“All right,” Dusty said with a broad smile. He held up what remained of his pie. “If you’re goin’ to cook like this, then I say it’s goin’ to be one fine trail drive.”

“And Dalton will be driving the hoodlum wagon.”

“Wait a minute!” Dalton said sharply. “Who said I would be driving the hoodlum wagon?”

“I said,” Clay replied.

“I’m not going to be driving any damn hoodlum wagon, poking along with the chuck wagon while the rest of you gallop all over the country.”

“Dalton, your father didn’t order me to take you with me. He asked me to take you. To my way of thinking, that leaves the choice of taking you or leaving you behind up to me. Now, I’m giving you that choice. You will either drive the wagon, or you will damn sure stay behind. It’s up to you, boy, so which will it be?”

Dalton looked at the other three men in the room, but couldn’t find any of them who would return his gaze.

“I’m waiting,” Clay said.

“All right!” Dalton said, angrily. “I will drive the damn hoodlum wagon.”

“I thought you might see it my way,” Clay said. He returned to his briefing. “I figure we can make it up there in ten days. It will likely take forty to forty-five days to drive the herd down, but I can’t be too sure about that. They are Black Angus, and I’ve never driven Black Angus before so I don’t know how they will handle.”

“What is a Black Angus?” Dusty asked.

“It is a black cow,” Clay said.

“I can’t believe that Big Ben is getting out of the Longhorn business,” Dusty said.

“I have read about them,” Tom said. “They were developed in the Angus region of Scotland. They are not only black, they are also polled.”

“Polled?”

“That means they don’t have horns.”