“Never saw a colder rain,” Flagg said, “nor so much of it all at once’t.”
Dag nodded. He was thinking about the stampede. No one had mentioned it, as if bringing it up just then would be taboo. But he knew Flagg was thinking about the scattered cattle as well.
“Not all the cattle are scattered,” Dag said, after a few moments, turning his back to the fire. Someone—he didn’t know who—was putting more deadwood on it. “I passed Skip, who was with about a thousand head.”
“Dag, there’s near three thousand more we’ve got to get back when we can see our hands in front of our faces. I wish this damned rain would stop.”
“It will,” Dag said. “They won’t run any more tonight and we can start roundup in the morning when the sun comes up.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be a damned mess,” Flagg said. “And we’ll likely lose or never find a few.”
As if to emphasize Flagg’s dire prediction, a wolf howled from a long way off, its mournful cry so depressing, nobody by the fire even mentioned it. But they all shivered, not from the cold, but from the dread of what they might find in the morning. Jo huddled against Dag and he put an arm around her. She looked up at him in gratitude and smiled a weak smile, the rosebud of her lips faded to a pale bloodless remnant.
He wanted her at that moment so badly, he could taste those lips that he dared not kiss.
Chapter 25
Haggard, sleep-deprived drovers and cowhands roamed the desolate countryside, rounding up strays, searching for lost cattle. They found some dead calves, disemboweled, half-eaten by wolves, scavenged by coyotes, and now fed upon by turkey buzzards drawn to the smell of death.
Flagg told Dag that, near as he could tell, the stampeding cattle had not run more than three miles in a more or less straight line. However, there were cattle scattered all over the land on both sides of the old buffalo trail.
“How long do you figure getting ’em all back will take?” Dag asked.
“Two days ought to do it. But we won’t get ’em all back, Dag. My men have already had to shoot two steers with busted legs, and we’ve found at least five or six calves that didn’t make it. I’m just fearful that some of ’em might have wandered into the Canadian during the night. It’s runnin’ worse than that damned Mora.”
“I know. I heard it roar all night. It’s too bad we had to cross there, where the Mora feeds into the Canadian, but we couldn’t drive around it. Anyways, I don’t know how far the Mora runs west.”
“I don’t pay that crossing no nevermind now, Dag. We got across before it got too bad. We were lucky.”
“Yeah.”
When Hughes and the others brought up the cattle they had guarded during the night, Dag turned the calf he had saved into the herd. It soon found a mother, or its mother, and had suckled in the warmth of the morning sun, butting its head against the bag to squeeze as much milk as it could from her teats.
Flagg sent the chuck wagon ahead and started the herd moving, what there was of it. He rode point and told the drovers to just bunch up the runaways they caught and then follow him. It was, he told them, going to be a long day, but he wanted every head brought in. “Even if you have to make a dozen gathers.”
By late afternoon, the herd had swollen to almost its previous number. A couple of drovers told about cattle with broken legs that they’d had to shoot. Flagg told Chavez to get a couple of hands and give him a head count. The chuck wagon had not stopped for lunch, but hands picked up hardtack and beef jerky, and ate in the saddle as the main herd moved north and west, following the trail Dag had marked off for them the previous year.
Over the next several days, following along the west bank of the Canadian River, the drive reached a small, nameless settlement, an Indian trading post, where most of the hands got shaves and haircuts, losing their ferocious mountain man looks, and a few got mildly drunk and suffered the consequences as the herd moved on. Fingers was able to buy rice and beans and twenty pounds of coffee, which made him feel better. Jo braided her long dark hair into a single comely braid, and to Dag, she looked prettier than ever.
It was hard work driving the herd over Raton Pass and into Colorado, but they finally reached Pueblo, marveling, as they drove north to Denver, at the towering Rocky Mountains, many of which were still capped with snow in a breathless display of majesty such as none but Dag had ever seen before. They watered the herd in Cherry Creek and picked up a crowd of onlookers when they drove through Denver. Several buyers approached Dag and Matlee in Denver, offering to pay twenty-five dollars a head if they would run a thousand head into the stockyards.
Matlee wanted to sell his brand there and go back home, figuring that was enough profit for him.
“Barry, we have an agreement,” Dag said. “You know if you pull out here, I’ll lose my deal in Cheyenne.”
“My hands are plumb worn down to a nub-bin, Dag. You could maybe sell all of your stock here and still go back home and pay off your mortgage with Deuce.”
“And break my word to Jim Bellaugh and the Rocky Mountain Cattleman’s Association. Nobody would ever trust me again.”
“You sure ain’t thinkin’ to drive another herd up this way, Dag.”
“I might.”
“You’re plumb loco, son. This drive has been enough punishment for all of us, ‘specially you.”
“A man’s word is a man’s word, Barry. I put a high price on mine.”
“Damn it, Dag, so do I. But a man has to be on the lookout for opportunity and we got one here.”
Flagg was listening to the argument and he never said a word until it was just about over.
“Barry,” he said, “it might be none of my business, but you got a good long life ahead of you. If you sell out your partner, the deed will foller you all your life.”
Dag looked at Flagg in admiration. “Thanks for backin’ me up, Jubal,” he said.
“I ain’t doin’ it for you, Dag, but for Barry here. He’s thinkin’ of makin’ a big mistake.”
“Gangin’ up on me, are you? Well, I’ve a good mind to sell my seven hundred head and ride on back.”
“And what are you going to do with the money, Barry?” Dag asked. “Buy more land? Buy more stock? And if you do either, how will that help? Ain’t a rancher in Texas would help you fix a broken pump or a windmill. Ain’t a drover who will work for you. Ain’t a buyer will buy from you. You’ll wind up eatin’ dirt and that’s for damned sure.”
“All right, boys,” Matlee said, finally, “you win. I’ll keep my end of the agreement. We go on to Cheyenne. I just hope the offer with Bellaugh still stands.”
And that was just what Dag was thinking when they left Denver and its temptations. But all the drovers had gotten some rest and some of them had gotten properly drunk, and some had played with the glitter gals and lost money at cards in the saloons and gambling dens on Larimer Street.
From Denver, they journeyed north along the South Platte, laying over a while at Fort Collins, then on to the old Cheyenne Trail. The cattle had fattened on the drive and the calves born along the way—those that survived the weather, floods, and storms and that weren’t cooked up by Fingers—had good legs under them and seemed to be thriving.
A number of stray curs followed the herd out of Denver. Jimmy Gough and Little Jake had the task of shooing them away, but they didn’t see the last of the dogs until they were almost where the Cache de la Poudre River emptied into the South Platte at La Porte.
They entered the Sweetwater Valley and bedded the herd down just outside Cheyenne. Dag, Matlee, and Flagg rode into town and checked into the Becker Hotel, where Dag arranged for a man to ride out to the 3 Bar 8 Ranch and tell Bellaugh that he was there with the herd. Word had already spread, however, and many of the townspeople, curious, rode out to look at the herd and meet the cowboys who had driven the animals all the way up from Texas. They all marveled at the size of the herd and the quality of the animals. They met the drovers and cowhands and asked a lot of questions. Some of them showed their hospitality by extending invitations to supper or to church.
James Bellaugh was a tall, rangy man with a small handlebar mustache. He found the trio from Texas in the dining room. By then, Dag, Jubal, and Barry had bathed, shaved, and changed clothes. They looked somewhat presentable for men who had driven a large herd of cattle more than a thousand miles.
Bellaugh smiled and shook their hands. “I’ve seen the herd, Mr. Dagstaff,” Bellaugh said. “I’ve got a man grading them and making the tally even as we speak.”
