The Palo Duro Trail

Chapter 19

There was a long moment of silence on the porch, as if time had suddenly stopped dead still.

“You know the man?” Gus asked.

Flagg recovered more quickly than Dag. “He’s one of our drovers,” Flagg said, “off scouting.”

“Well, he gave me the idea to ask you to drive my cattle up north with you. The money will allow me to buy some English stock for cross-breeding.”

“I’d better get back to the herd,” Flagg said, finishing off his tea and standing up. “Please tell the missus how much I liked her tea on a hot afternoon.”

A slight breeze stirred the two hanging plants that were suspended from the ceiling on small chains. They exuded the faint aroma of lilacs.

Flagg shook hands with Gus and Dave. “You can stay here if you like, Dag.”

“I’ll go with you, Jubal. I think we’re finished here.” He turned to Gus. “Have your herd ready when we pass through, Gus. I’ll take care of the rest. Handshake?”

“Sure, Felix.”

The two men shook hands.

“All of your stock branded?” Flagg asked.

“Yep, ever’ head.”

“We’ll trail brand ’em before we turn ’em into the herd.”

“My hands can help with that.”

“No need.”

“When we come out, I’ll bring the two hands I’m sending with the herd. You’ll meet ’em then.”

Felix and Jubal rode off, heading back the way they had come. Neither spoke until they were well away from ranch headquarters. They saw riders, who waved at them. They waved back. Doves coursed the sky, in pairs, darting past in swift undulating wing strokes, whistling softly.

“All right, Jubal,” Dag said, “what do you make of Horton bein’ up here at the Double C?”

“It don’t make a whole lot of sense, I reckon.”

“He ever been up this way before?” Dag asked.

“Why, he grew up around Amarillo. I think his pa had a spread on the salt fork of the Red, matter of fact.”

“So he knows the country.”

“Pretty much.”

Dag mulled over in his mind what he knew, what he suspected. He was pretty sure that Horton had tried to kill him once. And then he had left suddenly. Now his track had shown up here. He was heading north, toward the Red River. Why? Was he waiting somewhere up ahead in ambush? At some place where he had the advantage of concealment and surprise? How did a man protect himself against a drygulcher like that?

As they rode, Dag’s scalp prickled and he began to look around as if expecting to see Horton materialize over the horizon at any moment. He wondered why Horton wanted to kill him. But it didn’t take a big stretch of the imagination to see who would benefit from his death: Deutsch.

Flagg broke into Dag’s reverie. “Did you know, Dag, that most trail bosses don’t let the drovers bring their own horses to the remuda, like we did?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Yep. It’s kind of like a guarantee, you know?”

“A guarantee? Of what?”

“Well, not only that we have good horses suited for such purposes, but if a drover deserts the herd, as some do, then he’s guilty of a crime. He’s a thief.”

“Hm. I never knew that,” Dag said.

“You know. Cowhands get to a town after being months on the trail and some of ’em get real drunk and raise hell. Sometimes a man will meet a gal that he thinks is the most beautiful and saintly female on earth. Most often she’s some whore he met in a saloon, and in the dark, with all that paint, she looks like Cleopatra. So he’ll stay behind, sell the horse he’s on, and get married. If he survives that, when the trail boss and the other drovers come back through the town, they find the deserter and hang him for a damned horsethief.”

“What’s the point, Dag? Horton brought his own horse.”

“Yeah, he did. He rode his own horse, but if you noticed, whenever he went out lookin’ for outlaws, he always took one of the horses in Jimmy’s remuda.”

“I didn’t notice, no.”

“Well, when he lit a shuck from the herd, he wasn’t straddlin’ his own horse.”

“What’re you drivin’ at, Jubal?”

“I’m sayin’, if we run into Don up ahead somewheres, and he’s on that horse, I’m going to drag his ass from it and hang him from the nearest goddamned tree.”

“You’d hang him?”

“Faster’n you can say ‘Johnny Jumpup.’ ”

Dag rubbed his neck and squinted up at the blue sky, up toward where he imagined heaven to be. He looked at Jubal, whose expression hadn’t changed. He had no doubt that Jubal was a man of his word. If they ran into Horton, he knew Jubal would show him no mercy. To him, a horsethief was a horsethief.

“I think Horton tried to kill me one night, Jubal.”

“What?”

Dag told him about the incident at the pond and what Jo had told him.

“Why in hell didn’t you tell me, Dag?”

“I couldn’t prove it.”

“Well, that says a lot about why he left. And you think Deuce might be behind it? Offered Don some cash money to put out your lamp?”

“I wouldn’t put it past Deuce.”

A few seconds flowed by like water in a creek.

“Neither would I,” Flagg said.

They stopped at the chuck wagon, where Flagg told Fingers where to go and set up for supper. Jo got down and walked over to talk to Dag.

“Well,” she said, “you’ve got your herd, Felix. That must make you pretty happy.”

“If it holds up, we’ve got enough cattle to fill my contract.”

“I pray it does,” she said.

“Horton was up here first. Gus, the rancher of the Double C, told us he was by a couple of weeks ago.”

Her expression froze on her face. A worried look crept into her eyes like fumes from a smoldering fire.

“Felix, be careful. He might be up ahead waiting to . . .” She couldn’t finish her thought.

“I know,” he said. “Don’t worry. He’s not going to catch me with my pants down. Uh, I mean—”

She laughed. “I know what you mean. Just you be right careful, hear?”

“I will,” he said.

She put a hand on Dag’s leg. The pressure made his skin feel as if he had been touched by a branding iron.

By late afternoon, the herd came up to the lake and Flagg let the cattle go to drink. The drovers fanned out and watches were set for the evening. Those not on first watch unsaddled their horses and gathered around the chuck wagon, where Jubal issued further orders.

“The head honcho’s going to bring us seven hunnert more head to drive to Cheyenne,” he said. “I want you, Lonnie, to pick some hands to help you heat up the irons and trail brand ever’ head before we move out tomorrow.”

There was much grumbling among the men, but Cavins took over, drew the QC irons from the wagon, and instructed them to make four separate fires out in the open, well away from the lake and the chuck wagon.

As soon as the herd was settled down, Flagg rode off toward the Double C ranch house. About an hour later, Gus’s men began driving small bunches of cattle to each branding fire.

Flagg, along with Gus and Dave, rode up to find Dag, with two other men.

“Dag, these are the drovers from the Double C who’ll continue the drive with us.”

“This here’s Tom Leeds,” Gus said, pointing to one of the men, a short, stocky man with a taciturn expression on his ruddy face. He had a bedroll and a sougan behind his saddle, as did the other drover. “And this other’n is Vince Sutphen. Both good men, hard workers, with the usual cowboy vices.”

Dag laughed and shook hands with both men. “Welcome,” he said. “You go on over to the chuck wagon and have supper with us, Tom and Vince, and make yourself acquainted with the rest of the hands. Mighty nice to have you along.”

“Thank you, Dag,” Tom said.

“You got a fine-lookin’ bunch of cattle there,” Sutphen said. “A pleasure to meet you, Dag.”

The two men rode off and Gus heaved a sigh. “They’ll do to ride the river with,” he said.

“They look like good hands,” Flagg said.

“They do,” Dag said. “Thank you, Gus. Will you take supper with us? I think Jo, the cookie’s daughter, made cherry pies today.”

“No, the missus has a big meal for me, and if I don’t get right back, it’ll be on the table already and the dogs will eat it.”

The men laughed.

“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.