The Palo Duro Trail

by Ralph Compton

“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.

  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.

  Chapter 21

  Dag wanted to know how Flagg recognized the bootprint as Horton’s.

  “He cut the sole on a boot scraper,” Flagg said, “nicked the sole, just before we left Deuce’s.”

  “I saw the nick,” Dag said, as he finished saddling Firefly.

  “I ought to be going with you, Dag. Could be dangerous.”

  “I’d rather you stay with the herd, Jubal. I’m taking Lonnie with me.”

  Even as he said it, Lonnie Cavins rode up on a sorrel gelding, Socks, fifteen hands high with four white stockings and a blaze face—a strong young, horse, with a sound chest. Lonnie had a Sharps carbine jutting from its scabbard and wore a Colt six-shooter in .45 caliber. Another pistol dripped from the saddle horn, a matched Colt. He looked, Dag thought, with his beard and unruly hair clumping from under his hat, like a dirty pipe cleaner all covered with soot. He was as lean and as homely as a dried string bean, but the man was quietly fearless and could use each and every weapon he had close at hand. His pale blue eyes betrayed no emotion.