The Palo Duro Trail

Chapter 20

When Flagg woke up the next morning, he expected to see Manny Chavez shaking him out of his bedroll. Instead, it was Dag, hunkered down next to him, already dressed, two cups of steaming coffee in his hands.

“What the hell, Dag? Have you gone plumb loco?”

Dag chuckled. “I’m goin’ out with you, Jubal. Now drink this and get into your duds. I want you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when we ride out. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

“Oh, yeah? Somethin’ I don’t know? I don’t like surprises, Dag.”

“You’ll like this one,” Dag said, and rose to his feet. As he did so, Flagg sat up and snatched one of the cups out of his hand. He looked like a wraith standing there in his long johns, a blanket draped over his shoulders like a highwayman’s cape. He sucked down coffee hot enough to burn an ordinary man’s lips.

“I see you got old Nero under saddle already, Dag. You must have a hell of a big burr under your blanket.”

Dag sipped his coffee and looked out over the plain. A thin layer of fog hovered just above the lake and seeped out over the cattle herd like a shroud. Off in the trees, Dag saw a small pinpoint of orange light. A cigarette glow? In the predawn darkness it was hard to tell. Perhaps one of the hands had heeded the call to nature and was smoking a quirly in privacy before walking back to his bedroll. The light moved, then vanished; he wondered if he had seen it at all.

“You want to jaw all morning, Jubal? We got trails to ride, rivers to cross.”

“Let’s skip the fat chewin’, Dag, till I’ve got my eyes full open.”

“Trust me, Jubal.”

Flagg snorted. “I’ll tell Manny to start the herd up after breakfast, when the dew’s burned off. The men are tired as hell. They was branding those Double Cs all night, or most of it.”

“I know. I never heard so much cow bawling as I did last night. It’s a damned wonder our herd didn’t stampede to hell and gone.”

“I got this herd trained like a bunch of sheep,” Flagg said.

“Don’t you be usin’ that word, Jubal, or I’ll have to wash your mouth out with lye soap.”

Flagg didn’t laugh. He just grunted.

It was chilly, and there was heavy dew on the ground. Flagg drank his coffee, skinned out of his long johns and pulled on his pants and shirt while standing on his ground blanket, wriggling his toes.

He saddled his horse and the two rode away from camp into the darkness, fixing on the North Star for guidance. The black shapes of nighthawks loomed up and Flagg spoke to them before they could challenge them.

“Up early, boss,” Fred Reilly, a Box M rider whispered, as they passed.

“I got the eyes of an owl,” Flagg said.

A few moments later, out beyond the lake and riding through a stand of hardwoods, live oaks, hickory, and a few mesquite, Dag spoke.

“Who the hell was that, Jubal?”

“Fred Reilly.”

“Christ, I ain’t been able to recognize even my own hands of late.”

“Well, I have a hard time recognizing you, Dag. We’re all a bunch of fuzzy faces.”

They both touched their beards. None of the men had shaved in weeks. Fingers was about the only one who had scraped hair off his face lately. A few had sneaked over to the creeks they crossed with straight razors, but they were the exception, the younger men.

The moon still rode the sky, thirty degrees above the western horizon, but the sky was paling and many of the stars were winking out like wind-snuffed candles.

They had left the region of Palo Duro Canyon some days before and had been drifting west. In the distance, they heard the yapping of coyotes, a running trill of notes that rippled up and down the treble scale in disembodied song. In the trees, a whip-poor-will croaked its monotonous cry, which sounded like someone stropping leather, and a screech owl answered, sounding like the ghost of one of those nightjars.

A half hour later, they rounded a small ravine and there, stretching into the distance, was an ancient buffalo trail, streaming northwest. Dag reined in and pointed to the vast, uneven plain beyond the buffalo trail.

“That’s the cutoff I followed when I rode through here last year, Jubal. If you turn the herd here, we go to the YA, Charlie Goodnight’s spread. When I stopped in to see him, he showed me a way that will cut twenty days off our drive to Cheyenne.”

“I never would have thunk it,” Flagg said. “And you rode that way?”

“Sure did, and came back that way too. So it’s all fixed in my mind. Jubal, we don’t have to cross the Red going this way.”

“I was worried about that. We could have lost some cattle crossing the Red, maybe some men too. You’re a smart one, Dag. I would have thought we’d go straight north to Kansas and Nebraska and cut over on the South Platte or somewheres.”

“Long way around. We head northeast and I have a map all drawn out for you. We even pass through several towns, where we can re-supply and let the men have a little fun and maybe get a shave and a haircut so’s we don’t ride into Cheyenne lookin’ like a bunch of grizzled prospectors.”

Flagg laughed and stroked his beard. It had stopped itching and was beginning to feel like part of his face.

“When do I get the map?” he asked.

“Whenever you want. It’s drawn on oilskin and is in my saddlebags now.”

“I’ll get it tonight then and study it. I like the part about the towns. There’s been a lot of grumbling about that, but I didn’t want to lose any men in Texas. So I took the drive well away from any clapboards. Civilization spoils a man, sometimes.”

By the time Flagg and Dagstaff returned, Manny Chavez had the herd moving. They passed Fingers, Jo, and the chuck wagon on the way back. Flagg gave Fingers directions, told him where to turn west.

“We’ll see you at noon,” Flagg said.

“Yes, sir, boss,” Fingers said, grinning like a Cheshire cat on hard cider.

“I’m excited,” Jo said. “New lands, adventure, leaving Texas.”

“Let’s not hope for too much adventure,” Dag said. “But I guarantee you’re gonna find the trail interesting.”

“See you at noon, Felix,” she said, a warmth in her voice that wrapped around him and seeped into his senses like fragrant silk.

They met at noon at the head of the canyon, with the herd still moving, grazing slowly as they moved northwest. Riders came and went from getting their chuck and riding herd. The hands all looked haggard from working well into the night with the trail branding, but the change in direction seemed to perk them up. The sky began to fill with clouds by late afternoon, huge white galleons sailing in from the west, their sails unfurled in fluffy, bulging billows of cotton, brilliant against a blue sky.

The country was beginning to become more rugged and the cattle had to fan out in a wide area to forage for grass. By that evening, cattle, horses, and men were near exhaustion. Flagg made a decision that they would lie up for most of the following day so that everyone could get some rest before continuing the drive. The new cattle from the Double C were still inclined to turn back toward their home ranch and it was an all-day fight to keep driving them back into the herd.

“A day off will make the Double C cows more tolerant of being driven off their home range,” Flagg told everyone. “So rest up and then be prepared for some rugged going.”

Dag slept fitfully that night and was glad he didn’t have to get up early. But he was in for a rude surprise when, shortly after dawn, he felt himself being shaken out of a sleep that had finally come only an hour or so before.

“What? Who the hell . . . ?”

“Dag, get up,” Jimmy Gough said. “I got some bad news.”

“Huh?”

“Damn it, Dag. I’m real sorry. I don’t know how it happened.”

Dag wrestled his blanket from him and sat up, rubbing his hands through his hair and blinking his eyes. For a few seconds he couldn’t remember where he was, but then he heard cattle lowing and knew he sure as hell wasn’t back in his own house and bed.

“What you got in your craw, Jimmy?”

“Somebody sneaked in a while ago and stole your horse, Dag.”

Dag came fully awake. He stood up and looked at Gough as if he had lost his senses.

“Nero?”

“Yeah. I heard some whickering over in the remuda a few minutes ago. I got up and went over there. I saw some tracks and got curious, so I did a head count. It wasn’t no Injun, for sure. Somebody wearin’ boots come up and stole Nero. He was the onliest horse what was took.”

“Damn it, Jimmy. What do you mean it wasn’t an Injun?”

“Tracks are plain, Dag. The man was afoot and he wore boots.”

Dag dressed quickly and strapped on his six-gun. “Maybe you’re mistaken, Jimmy. Let’s take a look. Show me them tracks.”

The two walked to the remuda, where all the horses were hobbled and grazing on the sparse grasses. Jimmy led him to a bare spot where there were two sets of tracks. Dag recognized Nero’s hoofprints. And the man’s tracks were definitely not Indian: bootheels gouged into the ground, a clear outline of the soles. The tracks led away from camp, to the north.

“Can you read tracks, Dag?” Jimmy asked.

“I can sure as hell read these. We got us a horsethief, Jimmy.”

“But who? There ain’t no ranch within miles of here from the look of the land.”

“Well, I’m damned sure goin’ to find out. Let me pick out a good horse and saddle up. I’ll find the bastard.”

“In this country, you need a horse with good legs and bottom. How about that little sorrel gelding, Firefly? You rode him before.”

“Yeah. I’ll saddle up Firefly, get some grub, and light out.”

“You ain’t plannin’ on trackin’ by yourself?”

“It’s only one man’s tracks I see here, Jimmy.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Could be a whole passel of outlaws where he’s a-goin’.”

“I’ll think about it.”

By that time, Flagg and some others were up. Fingers had the breakfast fire going and coffee boiling. Dag had given Flagg the oilskin map the night before and he knew Jubal had stayed late by the fire, studying it.

He told Flagg what had happened and that he was going to track the horsethief.

“You better take somebody with you, Dag. Somebody who’s as good a shot as you are.”

“Why?”

“You know who you’re goin’ after, don’t you?”

“No, I wish I did.”

The two walked over to the remuda so that Flagg could study the tracks. “I recognize those boots,” Flagg said. “You’re going to be trackin’ a skunk.”

“That ain’t no news. Any horsethief’s a skunk.”

“Yeah, Dag, but this one goes by the name of Don Horton.”

Dag let the news sink in. Why hadn’t he come to that same conclusion? Horton, of course.

“Yeah, Jubal. He stole Nero for a reason, didn’t he?”

“He sure as hell did. He don’t want the horse, Dag. He wants you.”

Dag felt as if someone had slammed him in the gut with a sixteen-pound sledgehammer.