“What makes you think someone was shooting at a coyote?”
“I seen Don cleaning his rifle and asked him if he knew who had fired the rifle.”
“And what did Don say?” Dag’s voice was level, his tone guarded.
“He said he heard someone say there was a coyote after the herd.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t say, didn’t know.”
“Well, coyotes aren’t going to run in on a big herd. Not just one coyote anyway.”
“That’s what I thought. A damned fool thing to do, whoever done it.”
Dag let it go. He walked back to the chuck wagon and said good night to Jo. Then he got his bedroll from his saddle. He walked over to where Jimmy and Little Jake had their bedrolls and laid his out. There was no sign of Horton, the bastard.
With the herd calmed down, all the hands not on watch returned and took to their kips. Little Jake and Jimmy crawled into theirs.
“You awake, Dag?” Jimmy asked.
“Just barely. Why?”
“You missed all the fun.”
“I miss a lot some days.”
“Well, g’night.”
“Night, Jimmy.”
Dag slept with his pistol close at hand. He dreamed of deep canyons and fish swimming in dark pools. He dreamed of faceless men chasing him and dead-end rides through empty towns from which there was no escape. And he dreamed of Jo and Laura and of someone trying to tear them both away from him.
Flagg got the herd moving at sunup, and when Matlee and his men returned, shortly afterward, they had no cattle with them. Matlee was in a bad mood and griped about missing breakfast, but Finnerty fed his men hardtack and cold bacon, which he had saved for them. The Box M hands ate on horseback and slept in their saddles as the sun came up, hot and bright, burning off the dew and making men and horses start to sweat.
They made fifteen miles that day and the land began to change in subtle ways. Dag supposed that was just an illusion, because the color and the growing things looked pretty much the same. But it seemed to open up and widen as if they had ridden into another country, and when he looked at Palo Duro Canyon, it was red with streaks of gray and brown. Birds flitted in the brush and lizards sunned themselves on rocks. A hawk floated over the canyon, sailing on silent pinions, its wings spread wide, its head turning from side to side, soaring on invisible currents of air.
The next day, Flagg sent a rider out ahead of the herd and Dag asked him why.
“I thought I saw smoke this morning,” Flagg said.
“Smoke?”
“Not regular smoke. Signal smoke. Way off. I couldn’t be sure.”
“Comanches?”
“That’s what I figure. I sent Caleb Newcomb up ahead to scout it out.”
“Did you see one smoke or two?”
“I thought I saw two.”
“Could be,” Dag said, “but Comanches use mirrors these days. I haven’t seen signal smoke since I was a kid.”
“These were way far apart,” Flagg said.
“Mirrors go a long ways, Jubal.”
“See them clouds up ahead?”
Dag stood up in the stirrups and shaded his eyes. There were fat, fluffy clouds ahead, huge thunderheads cascading to higher altitudes. When he glanced up at the sky above him, he saw that there were clouds all around. He looked down and saw shadows on the ground.
“Ain’t no sun yonder,” Flagg said.
“Maybe you just saw clouds,” Dag said.
“Could be. Won’t hurt Caleb none to stretch his legs on a fine day such as this.”
“Nope. You’re the boss.”
Dag wondered where Horton was. He had not seen him that morning. He got the feeling the man was avoiding him. Dag hadn’t seen him, in fact, since the night when someone shot at him. He wanted to see Horton. He wanted to look him in the eye and see if Horton avoided his gaze. That would tell him something, he reasoned.
Caleb rode up fast, his hat brim flattened, his horse eating up ground.
“Mr. Flagg,” he said when he reined up, “I sure as hell seen something.”
“Yeah, Caleb, what’d you see? Injuns?”
“No, sir. But you got to come look. I don’t know what to make of it. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”
“Caleb, I got better things . . .” Flagg started to say.
But Caleb had turned his horse and was riding back from where he had just come from as if he were being chased by the devil himself.
Chapter 14
Caleb Newcomb finally reined in his horse after the shouts from Jubal and Felix reached his ears and sank in. But he didn’t stop, only slowed his mount to a fast, butt-pounding walk until the trail boss and rancher could catch up to him.
“What the hell, Caleb?” Flagg roared. “You tryin’ to kill that horse right from under you?”
“You gotta see,” Caleb said. “There, just over that rise.” He pointed to a point on the horizon some five hundred yards ahead of them.
“Remember this, Dag?” Flagg asked.
“No, I rode t’other side of Palo Duro. What is it?”
“It don’t look good,” Flagg said. “We must be a mite off track.”
Caleb waited for them as they rode up the rise. They all heard a far-off, high-pitched whistle. Then the three riders cleared the top of the rise.
Dag saw them. The air was filled with those same piercing whistles and then they were gone.
“Damned prairie dogs,” Dag said.
“Ain’t just that,” Flagg said. “That’s a prairie dog town. Biggest I ever saw.”
Caleb found his voice, finally. “I never saw such a sight,” he said. “Far as you can see. I come up on ’em and them whistles spooked my horse. He reared up and whinnied to beat hell. I near fell off. One minute they was hundreds of them standin’ like statues and then they all went into the ground and it got so quiet I wondered if I was dreamin’.”
“Not hundreds,” Flagg said, surveying the little piles of dirt in every direction. “Millions.”
“We’ll have to go around,” Dag said. “Don’t you think, Jubal?”
Flagg didn’t say anything for several moments. Instead, he looked across the vast expanse of plain that was dotted with dirt mounds thrown up by the prairie dogs when they dug their intricate network of tunnels underground. Then he looked off to the west, to the gorge that was Palo Duro Canyon, with its steep sheer walls. He had been in the canyon before, had marveled at its bright bands of layered colors: yellow, brown, orange, red, maroon, gray, and white.
He had seen fossilized imprints of long-extinct animals and plants embedded in the rocks, and he knew the canyon had good grass growing between the majestic pinnacles, buttes, and mesas, each layered over and protected by sandstone or other kinds of rock that protected the outcroppings from erosion. The floor of the canyon was dotted with several kinds of good grasses, as well as nopal, the prickly pear cactus, yucca, mesquite and juniper. It would be treacherous to drive the herd through there, but it might cost them several head of cattle and perhaps some horses if they tried to cross the prairie dog town with its treacherous holes that could snap an animal’s leg like a twig at any misstep.
