“Thanks.”
But it was a tough decision. Over the miles, he had drawn very close to not only his men, but to Matlee’s. And the two hands from the Double C were working out fine. They had a good crew.
Vince Sutphen, one of the two Double C hands, rode up from the east.
“I think I found a place to ford,” he told Flagg.
“Show me,” Flagg said.
Dag followed them downriver, past an oxbow, to a place where the river widened. He could see riffles showing that it was more shallow there than up above.
“Did you try it?” Flagg asked.
Sutphen shook his head.
“Well, head on into it, Vince. Take your time.”
Dag and Jubal watched as Sutphen put his horse in at a point where the bank was low. His horse stepped out gingerly, eyes rolling in their sockets showing more white than brown. The water came up to the horse’s knees just off the bank, but on firmer footing, the water was only ankle deep. Sutphen turned his horse halfway across and rode toward the hollow of the bend, stepping off gravel in the shallows. The water was belly deep for a few yards; then he was again in shallow water, clear to the opposite bank.
“Good enough,” Flagg said.
“Water’s awful swift,” Sutphen said. “My horse liked to have went down there a couple of times. I had to hold him against the current. Was a cow to founder, she’d be carried off.”
Flagg looked downstream. The river narrowed and the water roared just beyond the ford, rushing between its banks.
“All right, Vince. Come on back and see how it goes,” Flagg said. He turned to Dag. “We’re still droppin’ calves,” he said. “Wolves carried off two last night, but we still got a passel of ’em.”
“I know,” Dag said. “They’d never get across here on their own.”
“We’ll have to carry ’em acrost,” Flagg said.
“Then we will.”
Sutphen had to fight the current coming back over a slightly different course. They could see the horse wobble and falter, slip and almost fall. In the deep part, the horse had to swim and it lost ground, but recovered, just barely, before it was swept away downstream.
“ ’At’s a son of a bitch in parts,” Sutphen said, when he put his horse back up on the bank. “We’ll have to be mighty careful.”
“Maybe we should wait another day,” Dag said.
Flagg shook his head, looking off to the northwest.
“Nope, we got to get ’em acrost today, Dag. And mighty quick. That storm’s a comin’ and it’ll be a frog strangler. Rain’ll come down like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock.”
They rode back and Flagg took over, ordering the drovers to turn the herd downriver. At the ford, he told Chavez to pick out two men to send downstream.
“Two good ropers, Manny. We’re going to have some cows get away from us and I want them to drag ’em out.”
“What about the little ones?” Chavez asked.
“We’ll all have to carry those calves across. I don’t want to lose a single one.” He pointed straight up at the sky. Buzzards were gathering like undertakers at a massacre.
Chavez nodded.
“You take the lead steer across, Manny, and the rest ought to follow. We may have to whip some of ’em into the river.”
While Flagg and Dagstaff led the chuck wagon across, holding on to the traces of the mules, the drovers turned the herd, moving them slowly down to the ford. Chavez sent Skip Hughes and Barry Matlee downstream with extra lariats to catch any cattle that washed their way. The wagon made it across at a very slow pace, but rumbled out on the other bank and up onto dry land, then proceeded on to the northwest at a lumbering pace.
Next, Chavez ordered Jimmy and Little Jake to run the remuda across, watching the progress of the stock and letting the cows watch, as well. The lead steer stood there, its forelegs extended and stiffened, showing Manny that he didn’t want to go anywhere near that rushing water.
“Ready, Jubal,” Chavez said, when all the horses were across and well out of the way.
“Dag, you come right on in after I get that lead steer in the water,” Flagg said. “Manny, you and your boys be ready to crowd ’em.”
When all hands were set, Flagg roped the lead steer, rode into the water, and pulled the steer in as Dag pushed with Firefly from the rear.
Once the cattle started into the water, those on the shore started bawling. Cows struggled against the current and one started to wash away, regained its footing, and continued on. It took hours to get the herd across and some did get swept downstream. Each drover picked up a calf and carried those across via a slightly different route. Dag carried five calves across himself.
Cowhands kept crowding the herd so that they became a steady stream fording the swift waters. In the west, the clouds moved closer and the sky overhead became overcast, then began to darken. By the time the entire herd had reached the opposite bank, it was late afternoon and looked like dusk.
The hands downstream had lost only five head, but they rescued more than a dozen and brought them back, and dragged them over with ropes around the bosses of the longhorns.
Dag was riding drag with the other late-crossing hands when the first raindrops began to spatter his face.
Then the temperature dropped sharply, and the wind picked up to a brisk thirty knots, gusting to forty or more. Riders slipped into their slickers and pulled down their hats.
A few moments later, it started to hail with a sudden ferocity. Pea-sized hailstones pelted Dag and the other riders, stinging their faces, chests, and arms. Then the hailstones grew larger until they were the size of walnuts. It grew sharply colder and the wind howled over the land with whipping and swirling gusts.
Dag could barely see twenty yards ahead and then his visibility dropped to less than ten feet, then to five. He heard a roar up ahead and the terrible sound of thousands of cattle bawling. He spurred Firefly ahead, ducking to avoid the steady blows of hailstones on his face. He saw, finally, the herd moving away from him in a full run, and out of the corners of his eyes, he saw cattle streaming out of the herd and disappearing into the rain, the hail, and the churned-up mist from the damp ground.
“Stampede,” Dag yelled, but there was no one to hear him. When he looked around, he saw none of the drag riders. The hailstones grew larger and he was nearly knocked senseless by one the size of a pear that struck him in the head. Another smashed into his cheek, drawing blood where it had cracked the skin.
Dag lost all sense of direction. He could feel the ground tremble beneath Firefly’s hooves when he stopped and hunkered down to escape the brunt of the wind’s blast and hurtling onslaught of lethal hailstones.
His heart pounded as the rumbling sound subsided and there was only the clatter of icy balls of hail striking the ground, smashing into rocks. Firefly quivered beneath him, his head hanging low, helpless against the cannonballs that struck his wet hide and staggered him nearly to his knees.
Dag writhed as each stone struck him, bringing a stinging pain, not only to his flesh, but his bones.
And worst of all, he thought, he was completely lost, with the precious herd in full stampede.
Chapter 24
The ground was white and cold when the hail stopped. Dag saw dead jackrabbits lying here and there, stoned to death by the rocketing hail. Now a steady chill rain fell. Dag pulled his sougan free of its lashing behind the cantle and slipped into it. His was a heavy poncho that he wished he’d had when the storm started. He was cold, shivering, and soaked through to the skin as he started trying to pick up the trail of at least some of the cattle that had scattered to the winds.
As he rode, without bearings, ducking his head against the slashing rain, Dag saw a dead quail, then another, and the icy hail melting ever so slowly, for the rain was almost as cold as the ice that blanketed the ground. He
