herd.
“See you in the mornin’, Jubal,” Horton said, as Flagg and the others rode off to the south for more rope.
“You get some rest, Don. It’s going to be like this for a while.”
“I know,” Horton said, and started building himself a cigarette with the makings in his pocket. He built a small fire to keep warm. It was already turning chilly and midnight was a long way off.
In the far dark, where the moon’s light did not stretch, deep in the hardwood canyon called the Palo Duro, coyotes yapped then broke into melodious ribbons of chromatic song—cries that ranged up and down the scale in some ancient cryptic language. Horton listened to them and felt a chill course down his spine. The coyotes seemed to be intoning a kind of death song and death was on his mind that night.
He wriggled his toes in his right boot. He felt the padded oilskin folder with five hundred-dollar bills inside. Deutsch had written out an agreement and had signed it. That was in the packet too. Deuce had given him that money before he left the Rocking D to go with Flagg. It was just a down payment. There were three more packets containing five hundred dollars each waiting for him when he finished the job.
As he smoked, Horton mulled over a way to accomplish his tasks so that they would look like accidents and he would not be suspected.
Deuce wanted him to kill Felix Dagstaff and Jubal Flagg before they reached the Red River. His reward would be two thousand dollars and the deed to Flagg’s ranch, which Deuce assured him would be free and clear if Flagg died on the cattle drive north.
The notes of the coyote songs faded away and the moon seemed to glow even brighter as Horton blew a plume of smoke into the air. The smoke floated like a gossamer ghost above his head before the breeze tore it into wisps and the last shred vanished.
Deuce had asked Horton for his loyalty, and he had gladly sworn it to his boss. For the rewards Deuce had promised, a man could be very loyal. Now all he had to do was figure a way to kill two men without arousing any suspicion that he had done it. And he knew, along the Palo Duro, with a large herd of cattle, there would be plenty of opportunities to carry out his deadly mission.
Chapter 9
Dag saw the orange glimmer of a fire along the ragged line of dogwoods. He held up his hand to halt the drive, spoke to the man riding a few yards behind him.
“This is where we stop,” Dag said.
The cattle fanned out over the grasslands as dawn was breaking. Off to the left, the hands could see the fire by the creek. They all figured that it meant the end of a long night and the lead rider, Caleb Newcomb, a D Slash hand, flanked the lead cow and started turning the herd to bunch it up and let it water at the creek. Dag looked back at the outriders and signaled for his men to let the herd graze. They had covered nine or ten miles during the night. The men and the stock were tired and hungry.
Little Jake rode up to Dag on the point, met him as he was riding toward the fire and smoke.
“I hope that chuck wagon catches up pretty quick, Mr. Dagstaff,” Little Jake said.
“You still got butterflies in your belly, Little Jake?”
“Heck, I got butterflies, moths, crawlin’ spiders, and doodlebugs, sir.”
“Well, you cracked your cherry last night, son.”
“Huh?”
Dag laughed. “Just a joke, Little Jake. Let’s see what we got over here. I see cattle by the creek. Must be Flagg’s bunch. Go over yonder and holler at Lonnie and tell him to bring the D Slash irons.”
“Yes, sir.” Little Jake rode off to tell Lonnie Cavins to fetch the branding irons.
Don Horton was puffing on a quirly when Dag rode up. He looked disheveled, red-eyed. The herd around him had swelled, but Flagg was there too, helping the others keep the outlaw cattle from joining the main herd.
“You get a head count?” Dag asked.
“Flagg says we got over forty head,” Horton said. “I was catching some shut-eye when he brought in this last bunch.”
“Better put some more wood on that fire, Don. We got irons comin’.”
Lonnie Cavins carried the D Slash branding irons in his saddlebags. He had four of them in the fire by the time Flagg rode up to talk to Dagstaff.
“You done good, Jubal,” Dag said.
“It’s a start. There are some more wild cattle just over that hillock there. Followed us in like sheep early this morning.”
“How many?”
“Upward of fifty, I reckon. Some folks don’t tend their ranches like they should.”
Dag let out a low whistle.
“You mean you rounded up over a hundred head last night?”
“At least,” Flagg said.
“I’m plumb flabbergasted,” Dag said.
“Cows are herd animals. You just got to let them know where the herd ought to go. You got to be slow and patient. But when you’re roundin’ up outlaws, it works the same. When we run these into the main herd, they’ll think they’re home for good. It don’t take long.”
Dag knew that, but he had never seen it work like this. He knew that he had made the right decision in hiring Flagg as trail boss.
The morning sun bleached away most of the shadows and lit the grasses and cacti with a shower of golden light. Dew sparkled like tiny jewels on the plain, and the scent of cactus flowers wafted to Dag’s nostrils. The cholla and the nopal were in bloom, the aroma from them heady in the air like some exotic perfume.
The chuck wagon pulled up and stopped nearby a few moments later. Finnerty set the brake as his daughter, Jo, hopped down. He began to set up his cooking irons while Jo cleared ground for a firepit. As he was driving the irons into the ground, she gathered firewood and stacked it next to the place she had cleared. Then she gathered rocks and made a fire ring while her father set up a bench using two sawhorses and a two-by-twelve board. As Jo started the fire, Fingers began mixing flour and water for flapjacks, cracking eggs into the mixture and stirring it with a wooden ladle.
Jo began helping her father after the fire was burning well. She was seemingly oblivious to all that was going on around them. The hands were bulldogging the unbranded outlaw cattle, and four men were pressing hot irons on the hips of the downed cows. The air was filled with the smell of burning hair and flesh. The men grunted and cursed, trying to ignore the smell of food less than a hundred yards away.
Little Jake and Paco led the branded cattle into the main herd, set them to grazing. Caleb Newcomb worked one of the D Slash irons, while Jorge Delgado and Ricardo Mendoza held down the cow to be marked. Dag branded while Ed Langley, another of his hands, and Ricardo Mendoza sat on a squirming steer. Lonnie Cavins branded the cows held down by Chavez and Horton. Flagg and Doofus Wallace kept bringing in a half dozen or so cows at a time, then rode back and rounded up more, dragging some in with ropes, herding those they could.
Fingers held off cooking the flapjacks until all the cows were branded and run into the herd. But he set two large coffeepots with spouts on the fire. Then he started pouring the mix onto large skillets while Jo flipped the flapjacks. There were maple syrup hauled in from Corpus Christi, fried potatoes, and sausage from hogs raised on Finnerty’s spread, recently butchered and barreled in brine.
Fingers rang the triangle and the hands who weren’t tending the herd streamed over to the chuck wagon like ants to honey. Some of the hands already had empty coffee cups in their hands, the aroma of coffee hung in the air like the delicious taste of chocolate.
Jimmy Gough finished securing the remuda and sauntered over to the group around the chuck wagon and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Boy,” he said, “I can smell the bacon, Fingers. Sugar-cured, I’ll bet.”
“Just like you, Jimmy,” Finnerty cracked.
“How do you keep all them hogs from runnin’ off, Fingers?” Wallace, one of the D Slash cowhands,
