Cougar's Prey (9781101544846)

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Cougar's Prey (9781101544846) Page 17

by Sweazy, Larry D.


  CHAPTER 28

  The rising full moon cast enough light onto the trail for Josiah and Scrap to keep traveling at an easy pace. It was hard to tell how much time had passed, maybe an hour, maybe two, since they’d left the camp. Once they had settled into the ride and were able to identify the tracks left by the stolen longhorns, Scrap had gone silent, riding behind Josiah, keeping a decent distance between the two horses.

  Traveling at night had its risks. The horses could step into a badger hole or onto an unseen rattlesnake, and both prospects could cause harm, or even death, to either of the men’s trusted steeds. Still, with the moonlight providing clear passage, Josiah felt it necessary to keep going.

  No man, no matter how skilled, was going to keep a herd of nearly a hundred longhorns moving into the night. They would have to stop, and that made the risk all that much easier to take. The sooner they found the herd, the better.

  Josiah wanted nothing more at that moment than to find Miguel and the rustlers and put an end to whatever scheme the guitar player was involved in. It was a turn from his sobering mood back at the cowboy camp, where he felt responsible for the stampede. One more thing gone wrong, at his hand, to weigh him down.

  Guilt was not an emotion that Josiah was accustomed to experiencing, much less carrying around like this, but lately, that was about all he could feel. Guilt and regret. But he agreed with Don Bowman. The rustlers would have found the herd anyway and taken advantage of a green and anxious crew. The theft really had nothing to do with his presence among longhorns.

  Miguel was the only card in that deck that didn’t make sense, and Josiah was focused on finding the man, now, so he could toss off the guilt about the stampede and get on to Goliad.

  Somewhere in the distance, a coyote yipped, then started barking at the moon.

  Josiah slowed Clipper down to barely a trot. The coyote was north of them, not too far away, less than a mile. There was nothing unusual about the yipping. The coyote didn’t sound alarmed or on the hunt, but something made Josiah take notice—a chill ran up and down his spine, and then it was gone as soon as the coyote went silent.

  Scrap eased up alongside Josiah. “What’s the matter, Wolfe?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Whoa,” Scrap said, softly, stopping Missy.

  Josiah quickly followed suit, and looked at Scrap curiously. “You see something?”

  “There.” Scrap pointed to a dark lump, ahead about ten feet, just on the side of the trail.

  “I knew something was wrong. What is it?”

  “Don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Scrap slid off Missy and pulled his gun from his holster at the same time.

  Josiah followed suit and in the blink of an eye was a step behind Scrap.

  “It’s a calf. A newborn,” Scrap said, squatting. “Afterbirth’s about half licked off, and the legs are still not stiff. It ain’t been dead long.”

  “Coyote smells a free dinner.”

  “Probably so. Happens a lot on cattle drives. Mommas drop calves, and they’re forced to leave ’em behind, or a cowboy gets the bad luck of havin’ to put it out of its misery. Shoot it, leave it for whatever comes along. Seems like a waste to me, but a nursin’ mother slows down the travel. I heard some drives scoop up the calves and put them in a wagon, then let ’em loose to find their mothers at night.”

  “A calf always knows its mother,” Josiah whispered.

  “And a mother always knows her calf. They find each other, and the owner has more head at the end of the drive than he started with.” Scrap stood up. “Nothin’ we can do now. Them thieves weren’t gonna slow down for a cow birth. They got money on their mind and nothin’ else.”

  Josiah turned his back on the calf and walked slowly back to Clipper. He could smell the dead calf, the sourness of the afterbirth, and almost taste the death that was lingering in the night air. It was a recipe that could weaken the strongest stomach if a man let his mind—and heart—linger long enough and consider the grieving mother, lost in the darkness, bawling for her dead baby.

  There was no question that Josiah felt akin to the unknown beast, knew the loss. But he also knew that something didn’t have to be dead for a person to grieve. He missed Lyle more at that moment than he had realized. It was getting harder and harder to push the grief away, the homesickness.

  And then there was the loss of his friendship with Juan Carlos, somehow reflected by the moonlight in the dead calf’s eyes. The old Mexican had held nothing but blackness and anger in his eyes when he’d ordered Josiah away from the camp of shacks, threatening to kill him. It was the end, an unquestionable finality, and that was just as hard to take as far as Josiah was concerned.

  “We need to find these rustlers,” Josiah said.

  “We’re gettin’ close,” Scrap answered, as he climbed back up on Missy.

  A fire burned under a long overhang of limestone. An attempt had been made to keep the fire low, but it was easily seen by two pairs of eyes that were looking for anything out of the ordinary. Scrap and Josiah had spotted the fire at the same time, and both of them were surprised that they hadn’t encountered any kind of resistance, at the very least a man standing guard on the perimeter.

  A few sad moos reached up into the air, floating on a cool breeze. The moon was at its apex, burning brightly, like a torch held high in the sky. No stars could compete with the yellow orb, at least ones close to it; only in the distance were they able to be seen, and then they were faint, pulsing dimly.

  It was by the luck of the moon and clear sky that Josiah and Scrap had been able to travel for so long into the night. Once they had found the trail of the rustled longhorns, there was no mistaking it. Josiah had some tracking experience and had learned, over the years, the signs to look for, but in this instance, Scrap had proven invaluable, and remarkably levelheaded.

  Both men dismounted and tied their horses to a tall oak tree that stood all alone.

  “This is makin’ me nervous,” Scrap said in a low voice, trying to deflect any of the sound by lifting his hand up to his right cheek.

  “Seems a little odd,” Josiah said, standing next to Scrap.

  “Think it’s a trap?”

  “Could be, but what choice do we have? Wait them out if that’s the case?”

  “Wait until the sun breaks, maybe.”

  “We could do that, but it’s the men we’re after. These cows aren’t going anywhere fast.”

  Scrap nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Why don’t you circle around to the top of that outcropping, and I’ll slide in as close as I can get to the camp and see what’s going on. If there’s no man on the perimeter, then maybe they were a small outfit, short on men.”

  “You recognized that Mexican?”

  “I did, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It means I’m not gonna be in much of a mood to ask a lot of questions,” Scrap said.

  Josiah cast the boy a glance and was about to tell him to keep a cool finger on the trigger, but he heard another coyote yip in the distance. Only this one didn’t sound like the one that had alerted them to the dead calf, it sounded like a man trying to sound like a coyote, alerting somebody to Josiah and Scrap’s presence.

  CHAPTER 29

  Josiah and Scrap immediately split up. The swivel holster Josiah wore was unsnapped and at the ready. He carried his Winchester ’73, fully loaded and ready to fire. A Bowie knife also rested on his hip, and his gun belt had a full complement of bullets. He was as ready as he could be for whatever was coming his way. No group of rustlers was going to give up a hundred head of longhorns without a fight. Josiah knew that better than anyone.

  Scrap was just as ready with his collection of skills and weapons. As far as Josiah was concerned, there was no better long shot in all of Texas than Scrap Elliot. No man he’d encountered could outshoot the boy. There were always contests of some kind going on when the two of them had been in the Frontier Battalion camps. That seemed
like such a long, long time ago. The assignment in Corpus Christi was the longest amount of time Josiah had spent anywhere since he’d joined the Rangers in the spring of 1874, just a year before.

  The coyote had gone silent, and Josiah edged along a steady collection of rock, keeping the fire in sight. There had been no shadows. No movement. No sign of life around the fire. And that made Josiah nervous. He was almost certain that the second collection of yips he’d heard were man-made, not those of an actual coyote.

  The cows were content, though, and that was something to be glad of. He could see them standing or settled down for the night all around the outcropping. The fire might have given them comfort, Josiah didn’t know. But there didn’t seem to be any nervousness about, anything that would suggest that the longhorns had been recently spooked.

  Being as quiet as he could, Josiah managed to get close enough to the campfire to see for certain that no one was there. Scrap had not reached his spot on the outcropping to cover him, but that wasn’t a concern . . . yet.

  There was no gear, no sign of life, just a fire blazing away, like someone was getting ready to cook a good bit of beef . . . or send a signal. Certain now that the fire was a trap of some kind, Josiah edged back the way he had come, listening to everything outside of his own breath and heartbeat, trying to detect any kind of threat that he could.

  The last thing he wanted to do was end up with a gun poked into his forehead, or get taken prisoner, or worse, die, recovering a small herd of cattle in the middle of nowhere.

  He’d had enough threats—especially in the last few days, what with Miguel tricking him at Agusto’s cantina, and Juan Carlos ordering him out of the fishing camp at gunpoint. If anybody was going to be at the end of a barrel, it wasn’t going to be Josiah. Not this time.

  Back near the spot where they’d left the horses, he began to climb up on the mantle of rocks that Scrap had scooted along to get his position.

  He whistled before going on, and Scrap almost immediately whistled back. There was a quick two notes, a pause, then two more that meant everything was all right.

  Satisfied that Scrap had reached the spot they’d agreed on, Josiah climbed upward, until he stood on the crest of the rock, looking over the fire and down to the herd of longhorns.

  The moon was high and bright, the face sneering at him, so much so that Josiah looked away from it. The bright light was a great aid to him, though, helping him see far into the distance. Beyond the light, darkness stood waiting like a mysterious black curtain, hiding all of the world, its secrets safe, or at least unseen, for the moment.

  Scrap was waiting for Josiah, standing in the shadows, against a tall slab of granite, just above the fire.

  “You see anything?” Josiah asked in a hushed whisper.

  Scrap nodded yes. His eyes held a story, an urge to say something, but he restrained himself. There had been an odd air about Scrap since the stampede, since they’d left the fellas of the drive. It was like he was glad to be back on the trail with just Josiah, being a Ranger instead of a cowboy. Which made sense—all Scrap ever talked about was being a Ranger. He knew he could find work punching cattle, and he’d shown that. There was just something about the life that didn’t appeal to the boy. Either way, Josiah was glad to find Scrap a little more tolerable and less antagonistic.

  “What is it?” Josiah asked.

  “Up around the corner of that rock,” Scrap finally answered. “Two Mexicans with their hands and feet bound behind their backs, their necks both slit from ear to ear. Doesn’t look like a shot was fired.”

  “Somebody didn’t want to spook the cattle again.”

  “I ’spect so. Or else they was just killed because they was Mexicans. Maybe one of them minute groups did this?”

  Josiah didn’t flinch. “Could be. Show me.”

  Scrap did as he was told and led Josiah around the rock he’d noted. Sure enough, it was just as Scrap said. Two men were lying faceup, their wounds both gaping. The blood was still wet, and looked black and vile in the shadows cast off from the moon. A pool of it surrounded the men, soaking into the ground. They were Mexicans all right. Even in their current state, there was no mistaking that.

  Josiah walked around to the first man, a thin fellow with his eyes wide open and a pursed mouth that looked like it would explode if someone touched him. His clothes were ratty, and he hadn’t been dead too long. Once daylight hit, the flies would surely make him a home for their eggs, and whatever else came along, critter-wise, would have themselves a feast. It was no secret to Josiah what a flock of buzzards could do to a man, how fast they could pick soft flesh off the bone. He’d seen his fair share of animals and insects helping themselves to the dead in the war.

  “We’re not going anywhere soon,” Josiah said. “We best get to digging.”

  “Diggin’? I ain’t doin no diggin’ in the middle of the night,” Scrap said with a scowl Josiah had seen more than once. “Besides, I ain’t breakin’ no sweat buryin’ Mexicans. They might have been two of them that sought to raid Corpus. I say, leave them to rot.”

  “What do you suppose we ought to do with these two fellas? Prop them up by the fire and hope someone comes along and tells us what happened and who they are? They’re meat. Food for more creatures than I’d like to think about. We don’t have a choice but to bury them. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Says you.”

  “What should we do, Scrap? You tell me since all of a sudden you seem to have all of the answers.”

  “Are you gonna go orderin’ me around again? I sure as hell haven’t missed that much. I was thinkin’ maybe we could get along as equals one of these days. That trail sure would be much easier to ride, instead of your sourness ridin’ between us all of the time.”

  “Last time I checked I was still a sergeant.”

  “See, that’s what I mean. Why can’t you just treat me like a friend instead of somethin’ that’s beneath you, Wolfe? I ain’t stupid, and there’s things I can do better than you.”

  “Nobody said you were stupid.”

  “You might as well, always remindin’ me that you’re my superior. I know what rank is, darn it. We ain’t in no company, haven’t been for months. Not much has changed if you ask me, ’cept there’s two dead men starin’ at us, and I don’t like the idea of bein’ around them much. It could be me layin’ there just as easily as it is these two strangers.”

  Josiah closed his eyes for a minute and held his tongue. There were times when he forgot just how young and untested Scrap really was. There had been no war experience to harden him, no relentless calendar of blood, day after day of looking into the eyes of dead men, even though some of them were still walking. Friends died all around him. Good boys. Soldiers who loved their mothers, who died instantly with a gunshot to the head.

  Scrap still had a lot to get used to, a lot of death to see before he could see what it was. The worst part was the realization that your time could be up at any second. It was a violent, uncertain world they walked in. And it was growing more uncertain every day.

  “I’m just asking you what we should do,” Josiah said, looking as calmly as he could at Scrap. “Take it for what it’s worth, but I’m serious. What do you think we should do, Elliot? I’m listening.”

  “I think we ought to wait till daylight. Poke around and see what we can, and try and figure out who these fellas are and what happened to them. Somebody had to sneak up on them to cut them like that.”

  “Somebody slit their throats. Killed them. They’re dead.”

  “Then why didn’t the person take these here longhorns? Round them up and ride off with them? And why is there just two men? Two men might’ve been able to round these cows, but they’d have to of been mighty good at the cut, and I ain’t never seen Mexcians that good on a horse.”

  Josiah didn’t say anything right away. Scrap’s face was red with anger, and he was as tense as a skunk about ready to squirt.

  “All right,” Josiah fina
lly said, “we’ll wait until daylight. There’s got to be some gear around here somewhere. We can cover them up with blankets. But once the light comes, we bury them, and we get these longhorns back to the herd. We’ve got to be in Goliad to meet up with Captain McNelly, and I swear, I’m not missing that rendezvous. Is that clear, Elliot?”

  Scrap shrugged. “Clear enough. I’ll go look for some blankets.”

  “You do that.”

  Scrap started off toward the horses, then stopped suddenly. “There’s thunder, you hear that, Wolfe?”

  Josiah listened for a second, then scanned the sky. It was free of any storm clouds. “That’s not thunder.”

  “It’s not is it? It’s horses.”

  “Sounds like six or seven,” Josiah said. “I knew those coyote yips weren’t real.”

  “Let’s go . . .” Scrap ran up to the top of the ridge. “I can’t see ’em.”

  Josiah shook his head. “They’ll be long gone before we catch up to them; besides, it’s too dangerous.”

  “Six or seven could have taken us, Wolfe. That don’t make sense if they was rustlers.”

  “Maybe the cows weren’t what they were after.”

  “You mean the Mexicans.”

  “Maybe they were one of those minute groups. They don’t have any interest in cows. They just want to kill every Mexican they can find in the state of Texas.”

  Scrap exhaled loudly. “I ’spect it ain’t right to let killers go, but you’re right. It might be too dangerous.”

  “That’s what I think,” Josiah said, knowing full well that letting a group of Mexican-killers go free would be the easiest thing in the world for Scrap to do. His prejudice was loud and clear, even though he hadn’t said anything of the kind. Somewhere in the distance, the coyote yipped again. Whether it was man or beast was a good question, but at the moment, it didn’t matter to Josiah; if either came sauntering into the camp, he was going to shoot first and ask questions later. If it came to that.

 

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