“He doesn’t like to eat them either, does he?”
She laughed and handed him a pole and the can with the liver in it.
“How far is this catfish pond?” he asked, as they started out.
“Not far. Maybe two miles. I rode Sugarfoot out there after we stopped.”
“We’ll walk it, then.”
“Yes, it’s such a nice evening.”
As the two started out, Don Horton emerged out of the darkness. “Where you goin’, Dag?” he asked.
Dag held up his pole. “What do you think this is, Don? A lightning rod?”
Horton laughed.
“Miss Jo, good evenin’,” Horton said. “Is Dag takin’ you snipe huntin’?”
“I’ll bet you know all about snipe hunting, Mr. Horton.”
“Snipe hunting” was a trick older boys played on younger boys. They took a boy out in the woods with a gunny sack and made the boy stand there with the empty sack, saying they would drive the snipes to him. Then the big boys just left him there, wondering how long it would take the younger lad to figure it all out. Jo had been taken snipe hunting herself.
“Well, I know there ain’t no fish in any of them muddy tanks,” Horton said.
“Well, I found a spring-fed pond that does have fish in it. Good evening, Mr. Horton.”
Dag chuckled and they kept walking.
When they were out of earshot, Jo whispered, “I’m glad you’re wearing a six-gun, Felix.”
“Why? I always wear it when I’m working or out after dark.”
“I know. Don Horton gives me a funny feeling, that’s all. I don’t know why he was teasing us.”
“It’s just his way,” Dag said.
“He knew where we were going. He heard me ask you.”
“He did?”
“I’ve been watching that man, Felix. And he’s been watching you.”
“What?”
“Whenever you’re not looking, he’s watching you, like a cat watches a mouse—or like a hawk sitting on a fence post looking at a rabbit.”
Dag laughed, but it wasn’t much of a laugh, more of a snort of disbelief. “Don and I don’t have no bad feelin’s between us, far as I know,” he said.
“Then I wonder why he keeps watching you like a red-tailed hawk.”
Dag shrugged. “Maybe he finds me interestin’,” he joked.
“Just don’t turn your back on him when you’re off by yourself. He might just be behind you.”
Jo said no more about it. Dag made a note to himself that he’d keep a closer eye on Horton, but he had no idea why the man would be watching him. Maybe it was just Jo’s imagination.
“Here’s the pond,” she said.
The water shimmered in the faint moonlight. It had high banks like the pond he had at home. Someone had widened it with shovels and there were tracks around it from deer, cattle, and coyote. Someone had tended it, so there ought to be cattle around close. He wondered why Horton had found so few.
“You can see it bubbling over on one end,” she said. “There’s a spring under here, and I saw fish when I rode up here this afternoon.”
“Did the fish have whiskers?”
She laughed. “Let’s find out.”
They sat on the bank and rigged their poles with line, hooks, and sinkers. Dag cut up the liver into small chunks and they baited their hooks.
Jo threw her line in the water. The sinker made a splash and then sank, dragging the line with it. Dag put his line in a moment later.
“You got a head start on me, Jo,” he chided.
“First fish.”
Dag chuckled. “A bet’s a bet,” he said.
All of a sudden, Jo pulled back on her pole and reared backward. Her line was taught and was making circles as it cut the water.
“I got one!” she exclaimed and bent back even farther, pulling on the line to keep out the slack.
That move probably saved her life, because just then, a rifle shot cracked. Dag heard a bullet sizzle just past his ear, frying the empty air where Jo had been a second before.
Dag’s blood froze as his belly knotted in fear.
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.
Chapter 14
Caleb Newcomb finally reined in his horse after the shouts from Jubal and Felix reached his ears and sank in. But he didn’t stop, only slowed his mount to a fast, butt-pounding walk until the trail boss and rancher could catch up to him.
“What the hell, Caleb?” Flagg roared. “You tryin’ to kill that horse right from under you?”
“You gotta see,” Caleb said. “There, just over that rise.” He pointed to a point on the horizon some five hundred yards ahead of them.
“Remember this, Dag?” Flagg asked.
“No, I rode t’other side of Palo Duro. What is it?”
“It don’t look good,” Flagg said. “We must be a mite off track.”
Caleb waited for them as they rode up the rise. They all heard a far-off, high-pitched whistle. Then the three riders cleared the top of the rise.
Dag saw them. The air was filled with those same piercing whistles and then they were gone.
“Damned prairie dogs,” Dag said.
“Ain’t just that,” Flagg said. “That’s a prairie dog town. Biggest I ever saw.”
Caleb found his voice
, finally. “I never saw such a sight,” he said. “Far as you can see. I come up on ’em and them whistles spooked my horse. He reared up and whinnied to beat hell. I near fell off. One minute they was hundreds of them standin’ like statues and then they all went into the ground and it got so quiet I wondered if I was dreamin’.”
“Not hundreds,” Flagg said, surveying the little piles of dirt in every direction. “Millions.”
“We’ll have to go around,” Dag said. “Don’t you think, Jubal?”
Flagg didn’t say anything for several moments. Instead, he looked across the vast expanse of plain that was dotted with dirt mounds thrown up by the prairie dogs when they dug their intricate network of tunnels underground. Then he looked off to the west, to the gorge that was Palo Duro Canyon, with its steep sheer walls. He had been in the canyon before, had marveled at its bright bands of layered colors: yellow, brown, orange, red, maroon, gray, and white.
He had seen fossilized imprints of long-extinct animals and plants embedded in the rocks, and he knew the canyon had good grass growing between the majestic pinnacles, buttes, and mesas, each layered over and protected by sandstone or other kinds of rock that protected the outcroppings from erosion. The floor of the canyon was dotted with several kinds of good grasses, as well as nopal, the prickly pear cactus, yucca, mesquite and juniper. It would be treacherous to drive the herd through there, but it might cost them several head of cattle and perhaps some horses if they tried to cross the prairie dog town with its treacherous holes that could snap an animal’s leg like a twig at any misstep.
“Dag, we’ve got to turn the cattle into the canyon,” Flagg said.
“How in hell do we get down there?”
“We’ll have to find a place where the land is eroded, a small pass through where we can herd ’em in.”
“All right. Let’s start lookin’ before that herd catches up with us.”
Flagg turned to Newcomb. “Caleb, you ride back and tell Manny Chavez to slow down the herd until we get back there.”
“You want him to stop the drive?” Newcomb asked.
“Just slow ’em down some. Now wear out some leather, son.”
Caleb rode off, whipping his horse with the ends of his reins and digging spurs into its flanks.
“I swear,” Flagg said, “he’ll founder that horse if he don’t have sense enough to grab another’n out of the remuda.”
The Palo Duro Trail Page 8
