“We’ll make it. I hope you can get the horses back.”
He nodded. They had to.
After the meal, Chet first made a quick check of all they were taking along. Coffee, jerky, beans, salt pork, lard, flour, saleratus, sugar, raisins, and dried apples. A small Dutch oven, coffeepot, and skillet, plus big spoons, spatula, tin cups, plates, silverware, and a few towels. Matches, some candles—three extra shirts. And plenty of hemp rope. He and Reg carried the panniers out and hung them on the packsaddle. Dale Allen threw on the bedrolls, and then he put the canvas tarp over it all.
Susie brought out the three .44/40 Winchesters and two boxes of shells. J.D. put the rifles in the saddle scabbards on each horse and the cartridges in Chet’s saddlebags.
“Tell Louise when she gets back from Mason, the boys’ve gone with me and we’ll be back in a couple of days,” Chet said to Susie. “Keep watch. No telling what’ll happen next.”
“Don’t let them filthy savages get you boys,” Theresa screeched from the doorway, and clawed the air like a cat with her arthritis-deformed hands. “They all should have been drowned as pups. My Gawd, I’d’ve held each one of them under the water myself.”
“Now Mother, get hold of yourself.” Susie guided her back inside. “They ain’t going after Comanches, just rustlers.”
“They took Cagle—they took my twins—”
Rock sat in the cane rocker and nodded his head. “If I was ten years younger—”
In the saddle, Chet looked down at Dale Allen. “Hold her together. We’ll be back shortly.”
“Watch out for them boys.”
“I will—you go fishing with yours.”
“Why?” Dale Allen blinked at him in astonishment.
“They need some fathering—since Nancy died you ain’t been much of one, I’m afraid.”
Dale Allen nodded in surrender. “They remind me too much of her, I guess. But I will.”
“See you all,” Chet said, and the three of them, leading the packhorse, rode out of the compound for the north pasture in a long trot.
“You ever go after rustlers before?” Reg asked Chet when they were beyond anyone hearing him.
“Several times.”
“You always get them?”
“Most.”
“Guess you hung them?”
Chet looked hard at the far ridge. “Yes, we hung ’em.”
“If it’s the Reynolds bunch, what’ll you do?” J.D. asked, pushing his horse in closer.
“A horse thief is a horse thief.”
“Even, like, if you know them?”
“Even then.”
“Gosh, I hope Susie was wrong…”
“Maybe she was, J.D., maybe she was.”
Over a fourth of the cavy was shod, so it wasn’t hard to pick out their tracks from where rustlers drove them out the wire-and-stake woven gate and headed ’em northwest. Chet pointed at the hoof marks, and they short-loped for a ways down the dim road.
Late afternoon, Chet spotted some smoke, and led the way off the trail to a place up in a canyon. A white man in his underwear top and pants came out of the jacal. He looked them over, then combed his too long hair back with his fingers and gave it a toss back.
“Gents, can I help you?”
“J.D., you look over them horses in the pen,” Chet said, and reined up the roan. “Evening, mister, we’re tracking some rustlers.”
“I sure ain’t one.” He made a frown like it was all a mistake.
Chet nodded, and looked for J.D. as the youth studied the stock. When the boy shook his head and started to ride back, Chet nodded again to the man. “Much obliged. Sorry to bother you.”
“How many did they get?”
“Over sixty head. Any of them with the bar-C brand on them will bring a reward my brother will pay if I ain’t back. I figure they’ll lose a few in their haste.”
“Thanks, I’ll be watching for ’em.”
“Sure,” Chet said, and turned Roan to leave. The boys leading Black joined him, and when they reached the road, Reg looked back. At last, he turned forward and frowned at Chet. “What’s he do for a living?”
“Eats our beef and lays up with that Mexican woman.”
Reg turned up his lip in disbelief. “You figure so?”
“Yes, and some day I’ll catch him red-handed at it.”
“Be kinda easy to live like that. I sorta wish I could live like he does.” Reg snickered. “I’d sure like to try that for a spell.”
“What’s that? Steal beef or rut with some old Mexican gal?” Chet grinned.
Red-faced, Reg pounded his saddle horn with his fist. “The latter, I guess.”
J.D. shook his head as if disgusted. “I ain’t having no part of either.”
“We better lope a ways,” Chet said, suppressing his smile and setting his spurs to Roan.
At sundown, they found a tank and set up camp. Horses hobbled, they made coffee and gnawed on May’s jerky. Too late to cook much, and they were tired. Chet fell asleep to a coyote’s yapping while wondering how far ahead the rustlers were that night.
Before dawn, he shook the boys awake in the morning’s cool air. Leftover coffee was reheated and some more peppery jerky was gnawed on. They saddled, packed, and rode off when the gray light touched the eastern horizon.
“Sure is cold,” J.D. complained, rubbing his arms. “I must have missed fall this year.”
“I guess,” Chet said, wishing for some rain on his winter oats. They were up, but wouldn’t grow much without more moisture. He’d planted close to eighty acres in the creek bottoms. Large acreage and an expensive outlay. But he’d needed the feed for horses and the milk stock. They’d farmed that much corn the past summer and made a good crop. Some of the crop made forty bushels of ear corn to the acre. His heart wasn’t into dirt farming, but he needed the output for the rest of his operation. Still, he recalled plowing with a fifteen-inch Oliver hand plow and hitting root snags that jerked the wooden handles out of a thirteen-year-old’s hands.
These days, they used hired help, five mules, and a riding sulky plow that could really lay the ground over. Did more work than four hands with walking plows could in a day and lots easier. Still, farming was not his favorite game. But he and Pa planted many crops, broke many teams, and until his Comanche episode, no one could stack hay faster than the old man. Real sad how both of his parents had become so done in by the twins’ abduction. But even death was better than that—with death you knew they were planted and nothing else you could do. But them red devils stealing those babies and never to know what became of them was a thing that had ruined his parents’ minds and lives.
“Them horse apples we’re seeing look fresher today.” Reg broke into Chet’s thoughts as the boy rode along and leaned over in the saddle to study the manure.
“I don’t think they stopped last night—kept going.” Chet stood in the stirrups, looking for signs of their dust on the northern horizon.
“You thinking that they ain’t got a batching outfit?” J.D. asked.
Chet nodded. “It may have been a lark they went on.”
“A lark?” Reg screwed up his face.
“I’ve done some dumb things being a little liquored up.”
“You never stole no horses.”
“No. but dumbest thing I ever did, I sang a song to a girl one time.”
“You did what?” J.D. was about to bust into laughing.
“Aw, I had a crush on Kathren Combs before she married Luther Hines.” Chet shook his head while looking hard at the long mesa ahead of them in the north—no sign of dust. “Well, one night, I got liquored up and took this Mexican fiddler along with me to play. Boy, was he drunk, and in the dark we went down to her folks’ place, and I sang some ballad in Spanish outside the house.”
“Were you any good?” Reg asked.
“Her father thought we were alley cats and shot at us with a shotgun. My, my, that damn Mexican sure outrun me.”
“He hit you
with the shot?”
“No, he was laughing too hard.”
“I sure hope I have some adventures when I grow up,” J.D. said.
“How old are you, fifteen?”
“Be that this next spring.”
“You will. Just don’t get pie-eyed and go sing to some gal. Her pa won’t like it.”
“How serious were you about her?” Reg asked.
“I asked her to marry me a couple of years later.”
“She turned you down?”
“Sure did.” Chet rubbed his calloused fingers over his whisker-bristled mouth. “I guess I was drinking a lot in them days and she was kinda upset about that, I reckon.”
“Then you decided to serenade her and win her back?” J.D. snickered out his nose.
“No that was a few years before that. Damn sure didn’t work anyway and that Messican he said, ‘Oh, mi amigo, it works every time.’”
“What did he say after you two got shot at?” Reg asked.
“Madre de Dios! That never happened before to me, hombre!”
At noontime, they reached a crossroads store, dropped out of the saddle, and tied the horses at the rack. Chet hitched up his canvas pants and led the way inside.
“Howdy, gents,” a man in his forties with a bushy mustache said from behind the counter. “What’s on your minds?”
“Food sure smells good in here,” Chet said, sniffing the rich aroma.
“My wife Alisha has some great stewed chicken and dumplings. Lunch is ten cents today.”
“We’ll take thirty cents worth.”
“I’ll tell her that she has customers.” He picked up the coins that Chet laid down and said, “My dear, three chicken dinners.”
“Coming, Russel, dear,” she said, as musically as he had. From the side room, she came with two dishes full of steaming chicken and homemade noodles. With her silver hair braided and piled on her head, she stood less than five feet tall. She handed them out and went back for more and a pan of fresh-made biscuits.
“Sure beats jerky,” J.D. said as if in disbelief. He dug into the food on his tin plate as he stood at the counter.
Reg grinned at the big biscuit in his hand. “My, my, this is living.”
“What brings you gents here?” the storekeeper asked.
“You seen anyone driving horses through here?” Chet asked.
“They went through here last night. Acted strange, bought some food and left—said they had to deliver their horses up in the Nation.”
J.D. pointed a fork at him. “One of them redheaded and lots of freckles?”
“Yes, what did they do?”
“Stole those horses from our ranch,” Chet said, and felt a knot in his throat. They finally knew for certain. He turned to his cousin. “I know, J.D. That sounds like Roy Reynolds. Sorry.”
J.D. shook his head. “He’s the one that’s gonna be sorry.”
“You know one of the rustlers?” the store man asked, looking shocked at them.
“All our lives,” Reg said with a wary look, and bit down on another biscuit.
The rich tasty food had drawn the saliva into Chet’s mouth, but somehow the realization that one of the rustlers was someone they knew made his tongue turn dry and the food become hard to swallow. This wasn’t going to be a nice trip—no way. Nothing he could do about it either.
After they finished the meal, they left the store and rode on. At dark, they made camp at a windmill. Tracks showed the cavy had been driven past there, too.
Chapter 3
“They was here last night,” the white-bearded man said to Chet and the boys, who were sitting on horseback. “Tried to sell me some of them horses. But I was wise to their game. Them horses in the herd had a bar-C brand on them. The horses they rode had 6Y and a lazy R on them. I knowed they wasn’t working for the man owned the herd.”
Chet nodded. “They stole those horses two days ago down on Yellow Hammer Crick.”
“I had ’em pegged then?”
“6Y, who’s is that?” Reg asked when they were back on the road and out of the old man’s hearing.
J.D. shook his head. “You know that one, Chet?”
He did, but he shrugged it off. Might just be a horse that Luther Hines had sold someone.
“How many days are they ahead of us?” J.D. asked, sounding weary.
“We must have cut it down to a day—or less,” Chet said.
“Let’s lope then,” J.D. said. “I want to get this over with—soon as we can.”
Late afternoon, they discovered a limping horse from their cavy. A stout dun that was favoring his right front foot and moved aside when they trotted up.
“That’s Sam Bass,” Reg said, recognizing the gelding.
Chet agreed and shook out a rope. He rode in and tossed the loop over the horse’s head, and made a wrap on the horn to shorten it up until he was beside the horse. J.D. pushed his mount in close and held Roan’s reins while Chet dismounted to inspect the damage to Bass’s foot. He lifted the hoof and cleaned it out with his jackknife. He pried a pea-size stone from the horse’s frog and then let it down.
“That ought to help you,” he said to the big cow pony, then clapped him on the neck and slipped the rope off him.
“What’ll we do with him?” J.D. asked.
“Horses go home,” Chet said, finished coiling the lariat and taking the reins back. “He should heal and be back at the home place in a week, if no one steals him again.”
“I never thought about it, but they do.”
“They do.” Chet mounted and they set off again.
“We’re getting closer,” Reg said. “Them horse apples are about steaming.”
“See that cloud bank?” Chet said, indicating the blue-black line that crossed the northwest sky. “It’s going to be a norther.”
“It’s only October,” Reg said.
“Never mind, it’s a-coming in and fast. I’ve been watching it all day,” Chet said.
“I’m getting cold just thinking about it. What are we going to do when it hits?”
“We may have to find someplace to den up.” He was disgusted not only about the threat of bad weather, but also about the time they’d lose as well.
“Any idea what they’ll do?” J.D. asked with a frown, and reined his horse around to look at Chet.
“No telling. Let’s push these ponies harder, maybe we can catch up.”
Both boys agreed. The rolling grass country, occasionally dotted with mesquite, spread out before them. They were somewhere in north Texas—west of Fort Worth by Chet’s calculation. The cold front moving at them out of the northwest had begun to show dark ragged edges when Chet spotted some buildings and pens.
“They might put us up,” he shouted above the rising wind.
With over a half mile to cover, they put on their slickers as the temperature fell. Chet smiled as he buttoned his coat—a man could freeze to death in one of them, but they did shed rain. The three raced for the outfit. They reined up hard in front of the low sod-roofed cabin.
“Hello the house.”
No one came to the door.
He looked around the place for a sign of someone. “Try the door,” he said to Reg.
The youth bounded off his horse, pulled the string, and pushed on the door. It went open, and he shouted from inside, “Nobody’s home.”
“Good, we’ll use it. Get the panniers and the saddles inside ’cause in less’n ten minutes it’s going to be hailing here.”
“How do you know that?” J.D. asked, jumping off and fumbling his latigos loose.
“See that green line under the clouds? That’s hail.” Chet carried his saddle inside and set it down on the horn. Reg was undoing the diamond hitch. When it was off, Chet loosened the canvas, and then grabbed the first pannier with the wind whistling in his ears. He packed it in the doorway and hurried back, meeting Reg with his arms full of bedrolls.
Hard drops began to pelt on Chet’s felt hat. “Is there a shed for the ani
mals?”
“I think so, over there,” J.D. said, looking anxiously at the worsening weather.
“Take ’em. We can get that packsaddle later.”
The youth set out leading two horses, and Reg led the other two. Lightning struck close by. The air stank with the sulfurous smell and the crash came right behind it. Chet dodged inside, and watched from the open door for the boys’ return as the rain began to turn to ice pellets.
It grew dark as night. Then, to his relief, they came for the house, making long strides and shouting over the hail’s noisy rattle on the porch roof.
“Horses undercover?” he asked, closing the door.
“Whew,” Reg said. “Yes, that was close to a wreck.”
J.D nodded. “They’re fine, even got some hay.”
“Yes,” Reg said. “They’ll be all right.”
“We should have a candle in the pannier,” Chet said, unbuckling the straps to open the lid, then feeling around for a wax stick. He soon produced one and laid it on the table. He scratched a match and lit it to melt some wax into the cut-down tin-can holder so he could set the candle up to illuminate the room.
“What’ve we got?” he asked, looking around.
“There’s cooking wood by the stove and I guess if we had a bucket of rainwater, we could make some coffee,” Reg said.
“You’re in charge,” Chet said, picking up a letter on the table. It was addressed to Nick Van Rooter, General Delivery, Max, Texas. The letter might tell him something about the absent owner. He took the letter out and carefully read the first page.
My name is Hilga. I am eighteen. I will be arriving in Fort Worth on November the 15th at twelve noon on the train. You and my father have corresponded about me coming to your large fine farm and becoming your wife. If I do not suit you at the train station, you must do as you promised and buy my ticket back to St Louis.
Yours Truly
Hilga
“This Dutchman who owns this place is in Fort Worth today, getting his mail-order bride,” Chet said, and thunder drowned out his last words.
“Getting what?” J.D. asked with troubled look on his face.
“A mail-order bride.”
“Sears and Roebuck has them, too?” J.D. blinked in his confusion.
Texas Blood Feud Page 2
