“Their lives to start with.”
“That’s something, I guess, with that Gatling you got set up. But I’m hoping you can do something to cause better feelings, or they might not be so quick to let us go.”
Jordy said, “They can keep all the horses in the compound’s corrals. I’m guessing the men that we are leaving to bury had horses here for survivors to lay claim to, as well as guns and other valuables. I suppose Amos had a fair amount of gold eagles stashed someplace. They can have a treasure hunt. We won’t be able to drive all the horses out of the canyon. Those that stay can divide the remaining horses. We’ll leave behind all the foodstuffs, whiskey, pots, pans cloth and other goods that were unloaded from the wagons. That’s the best we can do.”
“I can make that sound like Christmas. But I’m betting a lot more folks will die before the dividing’s done.”
“We’ll be long gone by then. You go make your pitch. Then get your friends and Songbird and be ready to ride.”
Jordy watched as Red Flanagan headed back up the slope toward the clusters of Comancheros beginning to merge and gather as he approached. They did not move like men looking for more fight. Red seemed to have good instincts and brains that most of his comrades lacked. He was confident the new wranglers would be joining one of the Lucky Five crews soon. He had no second thoughts about taking on the extra hands. They could use twice as many getting the horses back to the Lucky Five, and Jack had been taking on strays forever. He would approve.
Chapter Forty-One
The west end of Lookout Canyon was a river of horses. Sierra, astride Dancer on a rise along the south canyon wall, waited for Mitch Eagle Eyes to return. She had sent Mitch ahead to check the status of those who had entered the compound at the canyon’s north entrance. The gunfire coming from that direction had been horrifying, but all was quiet now. She had fired a few shots to warn Grandpa Jack they were coming, having killed or captured and bound all the guards without firing a shot, but the shooting had started too soon for her signal to have ignited the uproar that followed. It had sounded like several hundred men at war at the other end of the canyon.
Worst case, the Lucky Five crew members, including her grandfather and their Comanche allies, were dead or captured. She hoped for best case where the Lucky Five had defanged the Comancheros somehow.
She Who Speaks and the others were busy containing the horses while Sierra tried to evaluate what they faced at the canyon’s outlet. She figured they had something over a hundred horses after clearing out the branch box canyons. She estimated those with Turkey Track brands made up close to half, so most of the herd had been recovered. The Kwahadis would claim the remainder, and the sorting would cost them a good day on the trail. According to She Who Speaks, she and her warriors would remain with them until they passed through Castle Gap. After that, Sierra’s horses would be cut out of the herd, and the Kwahadis would take their bounty and break off on the Comanche War Trail, heading north to join their band, which could now be on the way to the Fort Sill reservation.
Sierra saw Mitch Eagle Eyes riding her way at a pace that did not seem frantic, so she hoped he was bringing good news. While she waited his arrival, she cast her eyes over the mass of restless horses that the Kwahadis and Lucky Five crew were trying to contain. She worried that if several broke away, others would follow and soon they would lose most of the herd and be forced to round them up again.
When Mitch rode up, he did not keep her in suspense. “We can take them out,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going on. I stopped short of riding in, but there is a truce or something because nobody’s shooting at nobody. We got a few down that’s being tended to, but there’s a heap more Comancheros being drug off the slope south of the trail. They got the worst of it.”
“Let’s move then,” Sierra said, doffing her hat and waving it at the herders, pointing east toward the compound and the route that would take them out of Lookout Canyon.
By the time she and Eagle Eyes joined the others, the herd was moving along the canyon floor. It took little more than twenty minutes before the wagons came into sight. The wagon teams were being hitched as they entered the compound area. Sierra saw that the Comanches who were with Grandpa Jack were waiting to be picked up by fellow warriors to be reunited with their own mounts outside the canyon, although by her count they were one short. As they neared the wagons, Sierra saw Uncle Rudy standing near one of the wagons where he had apparently been hitching teams. It appeared everyone had frozen in place at the sound of the thundering herd coming toward the compound.
She saw Jordy and Tige kneeling in the bed of a coverless wagon bent over two other figures. When she saw Thor sitting not more than a few feet from Jordy, her heart skipped a beat, and her body went numb for an instant before she reined her roan mare away from the horse herd and angled toward the wagons. The horses and wranglers, enveloping the compound in a massive dust cloud, continued past and would soon exit the canyon and head toward the location of the chuckwagon and nearby water and patches of grass, where they would all rendezvous.
Sierra, struggling to find her way through
