“I have a head count of seven hunnert and thirty-five head, most of ’em young beeves and all fit to make the drive,” Gus said.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Flagg said, “but I’ll tally ’em and give the sheet to Tom or Vince, whichever you say.”
“It don’t make me no nevermind,” Gus said. “Either one has my trust.”
“Then they have ours too,” Flagg said.
Flagg said goodbye to Gus and Dave and then slipped out of the saddle.
“I’ll walk back with you, Dag. I feel pretty good about this. It looks like we made our quota. Thanks, maybe, to Don Horton.”
“Yeah, that’s so. Maybe the man’s heart ain’t all black.”
“I’m mighty curious about that jasper, though. He’s done run way off the track and I’ll be damned if I know why.”
“Maybe, after he kills me, he’ll want to come back to the drive,” Dag said, “figures a favor like this won’t do him no harm. You couldn’t rightly hang a man for doing us a good turn, could you, Jubal?”
“I’d as soon hang him for murder as for stealin’ a horse. But we’re not going to let him kill you, Dag. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to tell every rider what we think he’s done or is goin’ to do, and I’m gonna put a bounty on Horton’s head with my own cash money.”
“You don’t have to do that, Jubal. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can, Dag. But the more eyes we have out there, the better the chance one of us will spot him before he can drygulch you.”
“That gives me some small comfort, Jubal.”
But it didn’t. That was the beginning of constant worry for Felix Dagstaff. Little did he know he would have other worries nearly as large before the drive ended in Cheyenne.
He would take Horton’s dark mission to bed every night and wake up with the worry on his shoulders every morning. It would be like lugging an oxen yoke that weighed a hundred pounds and was made, not of wood, but of iron.
Chapter 20
When Flagg woke up the next morning, he expected to see Manny Chavez shaking him out of his bedroll. Instead, it was Dag, hunkered down next to him, already dressed, two cups of steaming coffee in his hands.
“What the hell, Dag? Have you gone plumb loco?”
Dag chuckled. “I’m goin’ out with you, Jubal. Now drink this and get into your duds. I want you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when we ride out. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
“Oh, yeah? Somethin’ I don’t know? I don’t like surprises, Dag.”
“You’ll like this one,” Dag said, and rose to his feet. As he did so, Flagg sat up and snatched one of the cups out of his hand. He looked like a wraith standing there in his long johns, a blanket draped over his shoulders like a highwayman’s cape. He sucked down coffee hot enough to burn an ordinary man’s lips.
“I see you got old Nero under saddle already, Dag. You must have a hell of a big burr under your blanket.”
Dag sipped his coffee and looked out over the plain. A thin layer of fog hovered just above the lake and seeped out over the cattle herd like a shroud. Off in the trees, Dag saw a small pinpoint of orange light. A cigarette glow? In the predawn darkness it was hard to tell. Perhaps one of the hands had heeded the call to nature and was smoking a quirly in privacy before walking back to his bedroll. The light moved, then vanished; he wondered if he had seen it at all.
“You want to jaw all morning, Jubal? We got trails to ride, rivers to cross.”
“Let’s skip the fat chewin’, Dag, till I’ve got my eyes full open.”
“Trust me, Jubal.”
Flagg snorted. “I’ll tell Manny to start the herd up after breakfast, when the dew’s burned off. The men are tired as hell. They was branding those Double Cs all night, or most of it.”
“I know. I never heard so much cow bawling as I did last night. It’s a damned wonder our herd didn’t stampede to hell and gone.”
“I got this herd trained like a bunch of sheep,” Flagg said.
“Don’t you be usin’ that word, Jubal, or I’ll have to wash your mouth out with lye soap.”
Flagg didn’t laugh. He just grunted.
It was chilly, and there was heavy dew on the ground. Flagg drank his coffee, skinned out of his long johns and pulled on his pants and shirt while standing on his ground blanket, wriggling his toes.
He saddled his horse and the two rode away from camp into the darkness, fixing on the North Star for guidance. The black shapes of nighthawks loomed up and Flagg spoke to them before they could challenge them.
“Up early, boss,” Fred Reilly, a Box M rider whispered, as they passed.
“I got the eyes of an owl,” Flagg said.
A few moments later, out beyond the lake and riding through a stand of hardwoods, live oaks, hickory, and a few mesquite, Dag spoke.
“Who the hell was that, Jubal?”
“Fred Reilly.”
“Christ, I ain’t been able to recognize even my own hands of late.”
“Well, I have a hard time recognizing you, Dag. We’re all a bunch of fuzzy faces.”
They both touched their beards. None of the men had shaved in weeks. Fingers was about the only one who had scraped hair off his face lately. A few had sneaked over to the creeks they crossed with straight razors, but they were the exception, the younger men.
The moon still rode the sky, thirty degrees above the western horizon, but the sky was paling and many of the stars were winking out like wind-snuffed candles.
They had left the region of Palo Duro Canyon some days before and had been drifting west. In the distance, they heard the yapping of coyotes, a running trill of notes that rippled up and down the treble scale in disembodied song. In the trees, a whip-poor-will croaked its monotonous cry, which sounded like someone stropping leather, and a screech owl answered, sounding like the ghost of one of those nightjars.
A half hour later, they rounded a small ravine and there, stretching into the distance, was an ancient buffalo trail, streaming northwest. Dag reined in and pointed to the vast, uneven plain beyond the buffalo trail.
“That’s the cutoff I followed when I rode through here last year, Jubal. If you turn the herd here, we go to the YA, Charlie Goodnight’s spread. When I stopped in to see him, he showed me a way that will cut twenty days off our drive to Cheyenne.”
“I never would have thunk it,” Flagg said. “And you rode that way?”
“Sure did, and came back that way too. So it’s all fixed in my mind. Jubal, we don’t have to cross the Red going this way.”
“I was worried about that. We could have lost some cattle crossing the Red, maybe some men too. You’re a smart one, Dag. I would have thought we’d go straight north to Kansas and Nebraska and cut over on the South Platte or somewheres.”
“Long way around. We head northeast and I have a map all drawn out for you. We even pass through several towns, where we can re-supply and let the men have a little fun and maybe get a shave and a haircut so’s we don’t ride into Cheyenne lookin’ like a bunch of grizzled prospectors.”
Flagg laughed and stroked his beard. It had stopped itching and was beginning to feel like part of his face.
“When do I get the map?” he asked.
“Whenever you want. It’s drawn on oilskin and is in my saddlebags now.”
“I’ll get it tonight then and study it. I like the part about the towns. There’s been a lot of grumbling about that, but I didn’t want to lose any men in Texas. So I took the drive well away from any clapboards. Civilization spoils a man, sometimes.”
