Lightning spit. Turning to Laredo, Tom almost said something, but held his tongue, again. Pa would be inclined to thrash A. C. Thompson for that stampede. And the thought, those words Lightning had just spoken, echoed in his head:
“If my ma and pa are still alive.”
“All right, Laredo,” Tom said, and turned his horse.
“Boys.”
Both Tom and Lightning looked back at Laredo. The frog kept his head down now, did not, could not, look the two brothers in the eye.
“We ain’t got everyone accounted for,” Laredo said. “Not yet. I mean our crew and A.C.’s. Don’t worry about the dead beeves you’ll find. We’ll do a count later. But . . . you come across somebody, someone you know or not . . . if . . . if you . . . if you can tell . . . just fire us a warning shot. Two shots, spaced out, if he’s alive. If he’s dead, three shots.”
Tom could not speak. He merely nodded, sending rain sailing off his hat’s brim, and put his horse to a walk.
* * *
Dead cattle lay strewn across the churned-up prairie, which now darkened and thickened as the rain kept falling. Tom and Lightning kept their horses in a walk for two reasons. One, the geldings were worn out. Two, a dread kept them from hurrying back to camp. Fear knotted their insides.
After a mile, the rain slackened. Another mile, it picked up again. Tom shivered and realized he was riding alone. Reining up, he looked back where Lightning had stopped. Tom turned in the saddle and saw what had caught his brother’s attention.
The trail resembled some sodbuster’s wheat field after plowing. Yet amid all the dark clay, a bush stood, its leaves dripping rain, blowing in the wind that was picking up. The sight struck Tom with wonder. Figure this. In all this hell, in a land thick with dead cattle and crushed earth, a bush grew as if nothing had ever happened.
Looking at the bush, Tom almost smiled, until something else caught his attention. His stomach began roiling. He had not thrown up . . . not yet . . . but now thought he might. A piece of cloth clung to the bush, and, although heavy with rainwater, it moved with the breeze.
Something lay in a little depression in front of the bush. Tom could just make it out now.
“We best . . .” Lightning said.
Tom nudged his horse toward the bush; Lightning did the same. They soon merged and rode easily until both horses began shying away from the bush and what lay beyond the bush. Tom kicked and spurred, but the horse refused to go any farther.
He hoped his brother would dismount, but Lightning remained glued to the saddle. After dismounting, Tom handed the reins to Lightning.
“My gun’s empty,” Lightning said, finding an excuse. “Let me know if . . . if . . .”
Tom walked, his boots sinking in the mud. He stopped breathing when he realized for certain what he had feared. Moments ago, he thought the crumpled mass of brown near the bush was another dead longhorn, but now he could make out the remnants of a saddle, a bridle, the sorrel’s mane, its head. He could smell the excrement, the blood, and he saw . . .
He exhaled and tried to spit, but his mouth had turned to sand. Slowly, he looked back at his brother. His mouth opened, but nothing rose from his throat—except gall.
“Is it . . . ?” Lightning shouted.
Blinking, Tom shook his head.
Tears welled in his eyes, though, and dumbly, he realized that he had drawn his Colt from the holster. He held it awkwardly, pointed at an angle. He did not realize he had squeezed the trigger until the .38 bucked in his hand, and he smelled the sulfuric scent of gun smoke.
He squeezed the trigger again.
Then . . . once more.
* * *
“One . . . two . . . three!”
Muscles straining, boots slipping in the mud, Mathew tried again, pushing, lifting, trying to get the Studebaker up just enough. Beside him, Tess groaned, cursed, and then her boots slipped in the mud. She fell, and the chuck wagon dropped back to its side.
“Let me come over yonder and help you,” Groot called out.
“You’re not moving one inch, Groot Nadine!” Tess yelled as she pushed herself to her feet. “Not after Mathew and I just set your busted ankle.”
“But . . .”
“Shut up and stay still.” Tess wiped thick mud off her dress, looked at her boots, and spit out water as she ran her fingers across her face. That produced another curse as she left a streak of mud on her cheek and forehead. Rain quickly washed away the grime. She looked at Mathew.
“Try again.”
“No use.” He removed his hat, wiped his face with his sleeve, and returned the wet hat. Tess was strong, and game. She always had been both, but the chuck wagon was too heavy. He would have to wait until some of the crew returned. He glanced at the leather-burned gash in his palm.
“Come here,” Tess ordered, and he followed her.
They had managed to start a fire, protected from a makeshift lean-to they had erected with spokes from the hoodlum wagon and shreds of cloth that had been bedrolls and slickers. Coffee percolated in a pot, and bacon remained in a skillet.
Mathew followed her, and they joined Groot under another makeshift tent.
He sat in the mud, pushed back his hat, and looked at what had once been a peaceful camp. It reminded him of Brice’s Crossroads when General Forrest had led the boys against the Yankees north of Tupelo. The bluebellies had them outnumbered close to two to one, but they had routed the Yanks, sent them scurrying every which way but loose. The Yanks fled in a panic, leaving behind the dead and practically anything they could shed so they could run faster.
The hoodlum wagon resembled a pile of sticks. Flour mixed with mud. Bits of cloth littered the ground, along with six or eight dead longhorns. They had salvaged what they could, but it wasn’t much. Oh, he had Groot’s shotgun, and had found six shells among the threads in the mud that had been a gunnysack. Six shotgun loads of buckshot that would . . . probably . . . still fire, after he had cleaned them of mud, water, and grime. The chuck wagon would be all right, with some grease and a few minor repairs—once they got it righted onto all four wheels. And even a few cattle and horses wandered about, lost in a daze. Mathew could have tried to catch one of the geldings, but he wasn’t sure he could rope a thing with his hand gashed from that rein. Besides, riding bareback never appealed to him, and his horse could be all the way to Spanish Fort by now.
He knew to stay put. Let the crew find you. They—whoever remained alive—would return to camp, sometime.
Tess had wadded up a handkerchief and dipped it in the skillet. She took Mathew’s right hand and dabbed the gash with bacon grease, then wrapped the piece of silk around his hand.
“Best I can do,” she said.
“It’ll do.” The rain kept falling. “Thanks.”
“I got some whiskey in the top drawer back of the wagon,” Groot said. “I could use a snort.”
“It’s busted, Groot,” Tess told him. “I checked already.”
“Hell.” Groot found his plug of tobacco and bit off a healthy chunk.
Something echoed to the north, and Mathew ducked and stepped out of the shelter and into the rain. It wasn’t thunder.
Another. Mathew held his breath. Then he heard the third report.
“What’s that?” Tess asked.
“Signal.” Groot stopped working on his quid. “Three shots, Mathew . . . That means . . .” He stopped, turned to Tess, and swallowed, not the entire quid, and probably not enough juice to make him sick. Groot always had a cast-iron stomach. “It’s . . . just . . . a signal.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“I know what it means, Groot.” Standing in the rain at Mathew’s side, Tess reached over, took his left hand in her own, and squeezed it, hopefully. Mathew, though, pulled away without returning the gesture and walked through the mud, staring north.
He wondered. When was the last time he had ever felt this helpless? Not during the war, not even at Shiloh. He knew the answer. Forty-plus years back, just afte
r his parents had been massacred along with most of the people on that train bound for Oregon. He had kept following that damned old cow until he ran into that bear of a man with a bull and a dream.
What would Thomas Dunson have done? Well, for one thing, he likely would not have made such a boneheaded mistake as to camp where another herd could stampede straight through your camp, scatter your own beef and horses to hell and gone. Dunson would not have let a horse shy away from him, leave him with a wicked reminder of what wet leather could do to human flesh. No, Thomas Dunson would never have found himself afoot.
Yet here stood Mathew. No horse. He walked around the campsite, kicking up debris with his boots, went to the nearest dead steer and read the brand, then the road brand. Thirty, maybe forty bucks of beef reduced to nothing but a waterlogged slab to feed ravens, coyotes, and buzzards.
Only a chuck wagon left. The hoodlum wagon wouldn’t make fit kindling. Most of the supplies had been drowned or dismembered, spread across the campsite by bits and pieces, or blown south toward Nacogdoches.
“You ain’t puttin’ me out to pasture, Mathew,” Groot said.
Mathew looked up, realizing that he had walked back to the lean-to.
“I wouldn’t think of it.” He tried to smile.
“You’re not thinking about sending me home, either,” Tess said.
His head shook. “Groot’ll need help.”
The old cook spit tobacco juice into the mud. “You mean . . . you mean . . . I’s still a-comin’ along.”
“We’ll get your ankle checked out in Spanish Fort.” Mathew faked another smile. “You can’t cook worth a hoot, but you can handle a team of mules.”
“Horse apples,” Groot said. “You just don’t want to pay for no stagecoach ticket all the way down to Dunson City.”
“Come in out of the rain,” Tess said.
He nodded, but did not move immediately. First, he looked to the north, where the faint reports of three evenly spaced pistol shots had come from. The warning shot. That someone—dead—had been discovered. Then he spotted something off to the south and east, and he looked hard. At first he thought it was a steer, maybe a horse, but then he sucked in a breath, held it, and frowned.
Horse, yes. But with a man sitting in a saddle. The same man, Mathew guessed, who had been following them since Comanche.
* * *
“I meant to tell him something.” Lightning Garth swept his hat off his head and kicked the mound of mud at his feet. He stared at the soaked ground and what had once been a man.
“What’s that, Lightning?” Teeler Lacey asked.
They had gathered on the prairie, not the whole crew, just a few of those who had heard Tom’s pistol shots. Meeker, Lacey, Laredo, A. C. Thompson, and two of Thompson’s cowhands. The Thompson rider with the brown leather patch over his right eye had brought the spade. A. C. Thompson had pulled a little Bible from the pocket of his coat. It was a small Bible, though, not even half the size of the one Grandpa Dunson had owned, and a tiny thing compared with the one the circuit-riding sky pilot brought out when he came to Dunson City.
“Oh.” Lightning looked up. “You know. How he moved his soogans from the cantle to right in front of the horn.” He made an idle gesture at his crotch. “For protection. You know? Y’all made some jokes about it.” He found himself smiling at the memory, and that, he realized, brought an odd comfort to him. “Well, I was thinking that . . . well . . . last night, during the stampede, my horse bucked a bit, and . . . well . . . I thought I was a goner, certain-sure. Hit the horn, felt as if my huevos was heading straight up my windpipe.”
Tom’s head shook. He could see others smiling and realized a grin crossed his face, too.
“I was gonna tell him . . .” Again, Lightning paused.
“Tell him now,” Laredo said.
Anger seized him, replaced that feeling of solace. Lightning slapped the rain off his hat and returned the battered piece of felt to his head. “What for? He can’t hear me no more.”
“I think he can hear you,” Laredo said.
Lightning snorted, then spit into the dirt. Again, he looked at what was left of Alvaro Cuevas. For most of his life, Lightning had heard stories about stampedes, but this had been his first one. He had been told about what eight thousand hooves could do to a man, but there had been . . . what? . . . five thousand longhorns running like mad last night?
The young vaquero had been wearing yellow britches of waterproof yarn. That’s the only way Tom had figured out who he had found, from the bits of the twill-weaved cloth. Young Alvaro had said he’d stay pretty dry with those Burberrys he had bought in San Antonio last year. Special britches, imported from Basingstoke, England. Well, that’s what the gal at the mercantile had told him.
When the others had arrived, Meeker and the Thompson rider with two good eyes had joined Tom and Lightning searching around for the German silver crucifix Cuevas usually wore, but found nothing but a cleanly severed pinky finger . . . as if cut off by a meat cleaver. No crucifix. The Thompson man had tossed the finger into the pile of remains and mud and blood that had once been a pretty good cowboy.
As Teeler Lacey scooped up mud and began covering Alvaro Cuevas, Laredo Downs said in a solemn voice: “All right, I’ll rig up somethin’ to mark the grave. Reckon Mathew will want to read over Alvaro’s body.”
“If Garth’s alive . . .” the eye-patched cowhand said.
“You better hope he’s alive,” Lightning said, staring hard, not at the cowboy, but his boss, A. C. Thompson.
“Let’s find out,” Laredo said. “A.C., you take your boys off to the east yonder.” He pointed with his jaw. “Teeler, when you’re done, tie this wild rag to this here bush.” He withdrew a bright yellow square of silk, which he placed gently on the bush. “Then you take Meeker, see if you can find Joe, get back to gathering all you can find. I’ll get Groot, the boss man, the chuck wagon and . . .”
Lightning did not wait to hear any more orders. He trod through the mud to where he had ground-reined his horse. In a minute, he was in the saddle and trotting south. His brother rode alongside him.
* * *
The rain stopped, but Tess saw no break in the clouds, no blue skies, not even a ray of sunlight. Which seemed to represent how she, and all the rest, felt. Relief. Her sons were alive. But that was it. No joy. How could you feel any of that when a poor Mexican vaquero, only in his twenties, had been buried? When probably hundreds of longhorns were dead, and quite a few horses, belonging to A. C. Thompson and Mathew? When Groot Nadine lay soaking in the mud with a busted ankle that had swollen to the size of his thigh and kept turning ugly colors? When Laredo Downs said it would take three days, maybe more, to separate the two herds? When the weather foretold of more rain, meaning the Red would be running wild by the time they could cross and they would have to wait till the waters receded? When Mathew Garth, her husband of twenty years, looked the way he did.
They had righted Groot’s chuck wagon, greased the axles, and hitched Lightning’s and Tom’s horses to pull the Studebaker to the camp a few miles north. They had gone by the grave of Alvaro Cuevas, where Mathew had found the Bible, and read the beatitudes. No Sabe, a vaquero for Thompson’s riders, and Yago Noguerra had then sung some hymn in Spanish. The music seemed to linger on long after the final notes. They had made it to camp, relieved—if that were the right word—to find that no one else had been killed, or badly injured, during the stampede.
Groot ordered Joey Corinth and No Sabe about to help with the cooking, and A. C. Thompson had arrived from his camp with his cook, his men, and some supplies.
And now Mathew strode from where he had been sitting, to stand an arm’s length from A. C. Thompson.
“A sack of oat flakes?” Mathew said.
A. C. Thompson had been talking. Now he tried to step back, away from Mathew, but Mathew equaled the distance.
“That what you think a man’s life is worth?” Mathew said.
“Huh? What? Mathew, w
hat . . . ?”
“You’re paying me off for what you did to Alvaro with a sack of oat flakes?” Mathew rested his hand on his revolver.
A. C. Thompson’s mouth fell open, and he paled considerably. No one else spoke. Even Groot had stopped yammering to his helpers. He gawked, stared, mouth agape.
“Mathew . . . no . . . no . . . of course not,” Thompson said. “I’m just tryin’ to help, son.”
“I’m not your son. You’ve cost me four days, probably more. You’ve cost me one good man. Whatever you want for absolution, it’ll cost you a lot more than feed.”
Tess looked around, not surprised to find a wall in the camp. Thompson’s men drifted to one side of the fire, resting their hands on the butts of their holstered revolvers, or moving in the general direction toward their horses in the picket line, closer to their carbines. The riders for Mathew spread out around him, even those who—Tess could read it in their faces—thought Mathew was wrong.
She found Tom, on one side of Mathew, thumbs hooked inside his gun belt, his face sick, pale, but the eyes determined. On Mathew’s right stood Lightning, and his face frightened Tess even more.
Lightning grinned, and a light shone in his eyes that left Tess nauseated.
She waited. She dared not breathe.
The evening air turned into a tightly wound strand of barbed wire between two cedar posts.
No one would ever call A. C. Thompson a coward, not after all the drives he had made to Missouri and Kansas. Tess saw no fear in him now, just reason, and maybe loss. He seemed to grieve for Alvaro Cuevas. Maybe Mathew grieved, too, but just did not know how to show it . . . anymore.
Glancing at his men, the old drover must have realized that one move, one wrong step, could lead to more senseless deaths. Exhaling, he slowly pulled his hands away from his own belted Remington.
“The Mex yonder . . .” Thompson thrust his jaw toward Yago Noguerra. “He says the dead boy left a widowed mother and three younger siblings back at Llano Rojo.” That was a collection of jacales across the river from Dunson City.
“That’s right.” It was Laredo Downs who answered. Laredo did not look at Mathew.
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