The Palo Duro Trail

Chapter 13

Dag lunged to cover Jo with his own body, smothering her under his weight. The sound of the gunshot lingered in his ears for several seconds. And then it grew quiet. He thought he heard the sound of running footsteps, but he couldn’t be sure.

Jo struggled to free herself, squirming beneath Dag.

“Hold still,” he whispered. “Listen.”

Jo stopped struggling. They both listened, but all they heard was the sound of crickets sizzling in the grasses surrounding the pond, and the throaty wharrumping of the bullfrogs.

They listened some more, turning their heads so they didn’t hear their own breathing.

The cattle were quiet, except for a few still roaming around. The occasional whuff of a horse clearing its nostrils sounded. A far-off coyote yodeled. The distant whirruping call of a whip-poor-will was answered by another even farther away. Underneath all the vagrant sounds was the soft susurrance of their breathing, and underneath that lay the deathly silence of a graveyard at midnight.

“Felix,” Jo whispered.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“No, not anymore.”

“What happened?”

“Someone took a shot at us.”

“I heard it,” she said. “Who? Why?”

“It wasn’t a ricochet. I mean it was a straight shot. Aimed at you. Or me.”

She shuddered beneath him.

He looked down at her, her face barely visible in the moonlight, but the contours all there, the nose shadowed, the lips. Invisible eyes in dark sockets.

He slid from Jo’s body and lay beside her, still listening.

Something moved. Dag saw that Jo’s hand was wiggling. She still clutched the pole with the dancing fish on the end of her line.

“I caught a fish,” she said. “He’s still on.”

“Well, throw him back in.”

“But I won,” she said, her voice a teasing whisper in his ear.

“Yeah, Jo, you won. Let’s get out of here and back to camp. We’ll see who’s up, who’s pretending to be asleep.”

“What if he’s still out there, waiting for us?”

“We’re going to make a wide circle,” he said, “go back a different way than the way we came.”

Dag got up, drew his pistol. He peered into the darkness, looking for any movement, any sign of life across the empty plain. There was nothing that he could see.

Jo got up, brushed herself off. She still held the pole in one hand. She crept up the bank on all fours and squatted. She pulled on the line, bending her pole back over her shoulders. There was a splash, and the inertia gone, she fell backward, stopping herself just before she tumbled down the bank.

“Oh, it got away,” she said, still in a whisper.

“Good. Now I don’t have to pay you that nickel. Let’s get the hell out of here. Just follow me, Jo.”

He picked up his pole and helped Jo down the bank. They walked away from the pond, keeping it between them and the direction where they heard the rifle shot. Dag held his pistol at the ready, but it was uncocked.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“We’ll come up on the herd from the south,” he said. “Maybe add another half mile to a mile to our walk out here.”

She was silent for a few moments. “Felix,” she whispered, moving close enough to him that their bodies touched, “I can still feel you on me.”

“Huh?”

“Back there. When you were lying on top of me. Protecting me. I liked it. I felt safe.”

“Ain’t no nothin’ in that, Jo.”

“Yes, there is,” she said, her whisper louder than before. “There are feelings. My feelings. Yours, maybe.”

“I just didn’t want you to get shot is all.” His voice was gruff as if he were not at all certain that what he said was true.

“I know. You were protecting me, Felix. But it was nice having you so near. Almost as if . . .”

“As if what?”

“As if we were married.”

Dag swallowed hard. There it was, he thought. Jo did have her eyes on him. As Laura had said.

“Jo, we’re not married. I am married. To Laura. That’s not going to change.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “But a girl can dream, can’t she?”

“Maybe you should learn to be more realistic, Jo.”

“I’ve loved you for a long time, Felix. I will always love you. I can’t help that.”

“Maybe not. But you shouldn’t talk about marriage with a married man, that’s all.”

“All right. I won’t. I promise. I just wanted you to know how I felt about you, Felix.”

“You’ll make some man a good wife someday, Jo. That’s what you should be thinking about.”

She flung her head back in defiance, but said nothing.

As they drew close to camp, Dag saw that there was a lot of riders circling the herd. He heard one of the men singing softly. Some of the cattle were on their feet. The cattle were lowing and he could feel that they were restless, ready to bolt at the first loud noise or follow the first panicked cow. His heart felt as if it were sinking.

“That shot must have made the herd jumpy,” he said. “Come on, let’s see what’s going on.”

He started to trot and Jo kept up with him. They reached the chuck wagon and Dag handed her his fishing pole. He holstered his pistol and started looking for Flagg.

Flagg was riding toward him. He appeared out of the darkness and Dag waved to him. Flagg rode up, swung down out of the saddle.

“Where in hell have you been, Dag?”

“Jo and I were fishing.”

“Well, some jackass shot at a coyote and liked to spook the whole damned herd.”

“Do you know who fired the shot?”

“Did you hear it where you were?”

Dag decided not to tell him that he and Jo had been shot at.

“Yeah, we heard it.”

“Wasn’t you, was it?”

“Are you crazy, Jubal? I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“I didn’t think so. But it’s damned funny. Only it ain’t funny. I’d like to get my hands on the jackass who shot off the gun.”

“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.