To the Gap (Daughter of the Wildings #4)

by Kyra Halland

  “Market’s at the back of the grounds,” Landstrom said. “Don’t be afraid to bargain; they’ll thieve you if they can. Endis, the trail boss, is out there somewhere; make sure you stop and introduce yourselves to him. Tall, skinny fella, dark – got some Island blood in him as well – and a long mustache. Bington’s the wagon master; he’ll tell you where to stow your belongings.”

  Silas thanked Landstrom, and they headed off to the temporary booths that the sellers of various supplies had set up to cater to the gathering drive workers. As Lainie headed for a booth boasting Finest Ammunition, No Duds, Silas asked, “You can’t sell the cows for much if you’ve shot them, can you?”

  Lainie grinned. After being Silas’s student in magic for so long, it was kind of a nice turn of the tables to be the one teaching him. “You don’t shoot the cattle. You shoot the people who are trying to steal them. Or, if there’s a stampede or the lead cattle don’t want to go where they’re supposed to, or strays that won’t go back, you fire into the ground next to them, and that’ll scare them back the way they’re supposed to go.”

  A big brown cattlehound trotted up, tongue lolling out of her grinning mouth, and sniffed at them. Lainie rubbed the dog’s head, struck by a pang of missing her own dogs, Bunky and Snoozer, and Rat, the fat, one-eared orange tabby tom. “The dogs help too,” she told Silas, “but cattle can be stupid and stubborn, and sometimes you have to get firm with them.”

  As they bought their supplies and walked through the mustering grounds, they caught bits and pieces of the talk around them. Stories from previous drives, gossip and news, and, flying thick as biter-bugs after a summer thunderstorm, rumors of trouble with rustlers. Cattle theft on a drive was always a worry, but this year, with speculation that the cattle would bring record-high prices, there were sure to be more, and bolder, attempts. A thought came to Lainie, but she didn’t want to say anything to Silas about it within hearing of anyone else.

  They spotted a man who fit Mr. Endis’s description, and walked over and introduced themselves. Lainie checked Endis for power; he had just a faint spark, too small for him to ever notice it, probably from a single mage ancestor many generations back. He told them where to find the Bingtons, and said that when Silas had loaded his belongings into the wagons, he should come find him again to be put to work.

  Following Endis’s directions, their arms laden with their newly-acquired supplies, Lainie and Silas walked to where three covered wagons stood in a row. A table made of long boards laid across a couple of sawhorses stood in front of the wagons. Off to the side, a safe distance from the canvas wagon covers, a large cookfire was burning, with a pot and a griddle set over it on an iron grate. A stout middle-aged woman, wearing a brown shirtwaist and blue skirt covered by an apron embroidered with chickens, tended the cooking while an equally stout middle-aged man, wearing an apron decorated with roosters, served up plates of stew and biscuits to the men filing past the table. A quick scan with her mage senses told Lainie that neither the man nor the woman had the slightest trace of power.

  “That must be the Bingtons,” she said. She walked over to the woman. “Mrs. Bington? I’m Lainie Vendine.” As Silas had told her to do, she put a name-slip charm on her name.

  The cook looked up. Her gray-and-brown hair flew wildly about her face despite the kerchief tied over her head, and she was sweaty and flushed from the midday sun and the heat of the fire. “Mrs. Vendine? That’s right, you’re our assistant. I’m glad to see you. Feeding this mob is too much work for just Mr. Bington and me.”

  Mr. Bington, who had thinning light brown hair combed over his bald pate and a thick mustache, added, “You and the mister can stow your things in the middle wagon, then come on and get started.”

  Silas and Lainie put their belongings in the back of the biggest covered wagon, which was mostly filled with crates and barrels and sacks of food and cooking equipment. Lainie took advantage of the moment of privacy to whisper to Silas, “You don’t suppose some rogue mages might try to rustle some cattle, do you?”

  Silas was silent a moment as he arranged his belongings in the wagon bed. “Could be. It’d take at least two or three men working together, though, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Rustling isn’t a one-man job, not if you want to make off with enough cattle to make it worth the trouble.”

  “It’s rare to see two rogues working together, never mind three, and they’re more likely to be at each other’s throats than accomplishing anything.”

  “Stealing a good bunch of cattle might make it worth trying to get along. They could sell some and split the money, keep the rest for breeding stock, and start their own ranches. I heard there’s always buyers at the market who don’t look at the brandings as closely as they ought to.”

  “You might be on to something,” Silas said thoughtfully. “Even if they don’t want to go to the trouble of getting into the ranching business – most renegades I’ve met are too lazy for that – if they stirred up enough trouble on the drive, that might open up other opportunities for them. Like selling ‘protection’ from more trouble.”

  Lainie didn’t like the sound of that. “That would give them a lot of control over the drive.”

  “Exactly,” Silas said.

  “So you think we ought to keep a watch out for renegades during the drive?”

  He nodded. “We should anyway, but even more so if your guess is right. But if it comes down to fighting any mages, darlin’, I want you to stay out of it.”

  “It’s cattle they’d be after, not us.”

  “Renegades have been known to inform on other renegades, or even kill them and turn in their rings, in exchange for a pardon and even part of the bounty.”

  “Still, you’re the one with a price on your head,” she pointed out. “I’m not going to let you fight them by yourself.”

  “We don’t know that there isn’t a bounty on you. If the Council knows what you can do, there’s sure to be a bounty on you that puts mine to shame.”

  “We don’t know that they know.”

  “We don’t know that they don’t.”

  She let out an exasperated breath, blowing loose hairs from around her face. They had had this discussion before, and it never went anywhere. “We’re a team, Vendine. We’re partners. We work together. I’m not helpless, you know.” After all, she had saved him from Fazar and Oferdon. Had he forgotten that?

  He was silent another moment as he shifted his things around, his brow furrowed, his mouth and jaw set in stubborn lines. “It isn’t just hunters and rogues I’m worried about,” he said. “I don’t want the folks on the drive to find out about you.”

  “If you think I’m going to just stand by and watch you put yourself in danger without helping you, you’d best think again.”

  He looked at her, and his face softened a little. “You’re brave, darlin’. That’s one of the things I love about you.” He sighed. “You’re right. We should keep a careful watch out for mages. I’ll check the normal way, and you look your way.”

  “All right,” Lainie said. At least that was something she could do that wouldn’t make him worry about her. While they could both detect power and shields by reaching out with their mage senses – depending on the strength of the power, Silas could pick it up from twenty leagues away or more – she was also able to trace the lines of magic flowing through the earth and find disruptions in them caused by the presence of magical power. No Wildings mage would be able to hide from her as they could from Silas; that was how she had been able to find Orl Fazar’s buried Wildings power. And in experimenting during her intense training this past winter, she had discovered that, even when it was shielded, ordinary Granadaian power like Silas’s also produced faint eddies in the flow of power within the earth.

  The only problem was that to detect power that way, she had to sit still and silent with her eyes closed and her hands on the ground. “I’ll take a look tonight after dark, when no one can see me,” she said. “If I find someth
ing and don’t have a chance to tell you in private, I’ll touch my ring, and you do the same.” They were both wearing their mage rings on their wedding ring fingers, and the gesture would be meaningless, or just look like a sign of affection, to anyone who might happen to see.

  “Good idea. We’d better get to work now, or they’ll be wondering what we’re up to back here.”

  Lainie rose up on her toes to kiss him, then he went off to find Endis while she returned to where Mr. and Mrs. Bington were cooking and serving.

  Mrs. Bington was rolling out more biscuits. She tossed Lainie an apron, this one embroidered with carrots and apples with smiling faces. Lainie thought she could guess what Mrs. Bington did during her leisure moments. “Give that pot of stew a stir,” Mrs. Bington said, “then start gathering up the dirty plates. You can put them over there.” She indicated a table set up to the side of the wagons, where a large washtub and drying rack awaited the dishes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lainie said. She tied on the apron, then stirred the beef stew that was bubbling in the big pot over the cookfire. It smelled pretty good, but something was missing. “Do you have some stingergrass to put in the stew?” she asked.

  “Don’t use it,” Mrs. Bington replied. “It makes the stew too spicy. The hands don’t like it.”

  “Oh, okay.” That hadn’t been Lainie’s experience back home; the spicier the food, the better the hands liked it. But it would be better to not start off on the wrong foot by contradicting her boss. Maybe the Windy Valley folks just liked different things.

  She turned away from the stew and started hunting down the dirty plates and cutlery that lay scattered all over the mustering grounds. “Hey, Landstrom sure hired us a pretty cook this year!” one hand called out.

  Whistles and shouts of agreement followed. “Can’t wait to taste your dumplings, sweetheart!” another hand said.

  Lainie’s face flamed; the hands at home had never dared speak to her that way. She was going to have to nip this in the bud if she didn’t want to be dealing with those kinds of comments, and worse, for the next five months. She fixed the dumpling-loving hand with a stern look. “If you want to eat at this kitchen, you’ll watch your manners.”

  He shot a smug grin back at her. “Mrs. Bington’s never turned anyone away from her grub wagon.”

  Lainie’s stare didn’t waver. “I’m not Mrs. Bington.”

  The other hands laughed, and the offending hand finally looked away. Lainie went back to her chores, and while the flirting didn’t stop, it was considerably more polite now.

  She returned to the grub wagon with her armload of dirty dishes and set them down on the dishwashing table. “Back home I had a rule that everyone had to clear their own dishes or they didn’t eat the next meal,” she said to Mrs. Bington. The hands had learned quickly that she meant it, and it had saved her a lot of work.

  Mrs. Bington turned to her and folded her sturdy, flour-dusted arms across her broad bosom. “I’ve been cooking for the Windy Valley crew for twenty-five years, longer than you’ve been alive, missy. I guess I know what I’m doing.”

  The rebuke left Lainie feeling more than a bit set down. “Yes, ma’am,” she said as politely as she could. “I didn’t mean any offense.” Clearly, Mrs. Bington was set in her own ways of doing things, and Lainie was just going to have to learn to work around that. She bit back the words she really wanted to say, that were trying to fight their way out of her mouth, and headed back out to gather up more dishes.

  As she made her rounds, she found Silas wolfing down a plate of stew. Her stomach growled. “How is it?” she asked, wondering when she was going to have a moment to grab a bite. Probably not until everyone else had been fed.

  “See for yourself.” Silas held out a chunk of meat on a fork, as her hands were full of dirty dishes, and she ate it.

  “Not bad.” She would have browned the meat longer, until it was a nice crusty brown, to intensify the flavor. And it tasted as bland as it smelled; as far as she could tell, there was neither any stingergrass nor pepper in the stew, nor even any onions.

  “When are they going to let you start doing the cooking?” Silas asked.

  “I don’t know. Mrs. Bington likes to do things her way.” Lainie rolled her eyes, and Silas chuckled quietly. He broke the biscuit that was perched on the side of his plate in half and fed one of the halves to her. Her biscuits were better, too. Fluffier.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mrs. Bington casting her a disapproving look. “I’d better go,” she said around the mouthful of biscuit.

  Silas kissed her, and she returned to the wagons. Mrs. Bington said, “If you’re done flirting, you can start on those dishes.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lainie took her load of dirty dishes to the dishwashing table, scraped the leftovers onto the ground for the dogs, then set the dishes in the pan of hot, soapy water. As she started scrubbing plates, she wondered what it would take to win Mrs. Bington’s approval and get her to change her ways a bit.

  * * *

  THE OFFICIAL MUSTERING took place the next day. Endis seemed to be in ten places at once, while Landstrom walked around with his lists nailed to his writing board, making checkmarks and notes and cursing most of the time. A late herd of cattle had arrived the night before, and this morning they all had to be branded with the Windy Valley co-op brand. All the drive hands were put on the job. Though Silas didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing, he had always prided himself on being a quick learner. Certainly, he got a fast-and-hard lesson on how to make reluctant cows go where they were supposed to go.

  “So you never wrangled cattle before, Greenie?” one hand called out as Silas was trying to push a wayward bossy back into line through the use of sheer brute force. His obvious inexperience with the cowhand business had quickly earned him the nickname, short for greenfoot. Silas didn’t think much of it, but it was better than having to keep repeating his name for everyone who had forgotten it, which, over time, would make the name-slip charms lose their effectiveness.

  “Nope,” Silas answered. He staggered as the cow he’d been pushing against suddenly stepped back in with the rest of the herd as though doing so was entirely her own idea.

  “Been out here long?” someone else asked.

  Silas lifted his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead while he caught his breath. “From Granadaia? Six years. Mostly working odd jobs, and a little bounty hunting.” Keeping close to the truth was the best strategy when making up stories about yourself.

  The hand’s eyes narrowed, and Silas caught more than a few dirty looks directed at him from the other men. “Bounty hunting?” the first man repeated with a scowl.

  “No bondservants,” Silas said. Their hostility was only to be expected; the bounty hunters who tracked down runaway Plain bondservants and dragged them back to their mage masters in Granadaia were hated and despised in the Wildings, all the more so when they were themselves Plains who had turned against their own kind in exchange for favored treatment from the mages. “Private matters for Wildings folk, mostly. A bank robber or two. I did a job for Brin Coltor last winter.”

  “Brin Coltor, huh?” Respect replaced the dislike and suspicion in the men’s faces, and, as Silas had hoped, the conversation turned away from his background to Coltor and the state of ranching in general.

  Once all the cattle were branded, the herd had to be counted. Silas and some of the other less-experienced hands drove the cattle through a narrow aisle between two rows of mounted drive hands, who counted the animals as they passed. Every two hundred cattle, according to a consensus of those who were counting, Landstrom made a note on his papers and recorded the ranch brands on the cattle who had been counted.

  Doing the count took the whole afternoon; the end result was that three thousand, two hundred, and seventy-four head of cattle would be heading for their destiny at the Gap under the watchful care of a dozen drive hands plus the horse wrangler, the cooks, a couple of ranch foremen, Endis the trail bo
ss, and Landstrom. It would be the co-op manager’s job to keep track of how many cattle were sold from which ranch and for how much, and to pay out the wages and bonuses and divide up the rest of the proceeds from the sales among the ranches. Much was depending on his honesty and accurate bookkeeping. Silas didn’t envy Landstrom; he himself would rather wrestle cattle than paperwork.

  With the count finally done, Silas and the other hands headed for the grub wagons. Lainie had been kept busy at the kitchen all day, even though, from the glimpses Silas got, it looked like the Bingtons still weren’t letting her do any of the cooking. Bington was overseeing the final loading of the wagons, so Lainie was serving tonight. She gave Silas a tired smile as she ignored the hands’ flirting and dished up beans and salt pork and a biscuit onto his plate.

  Silas had noticed all the attention she was attracting, but so far it was all talk and no action, and she seemed to be handling it well enough on her own. If he intervened now, the hands would only learn to leave her alone on his account, which would do nothing to stop them from bothering her if they thought he wouldn’t find out. It was better if they learned to respect her for her own sake. Still, he was ready to lay down the law as to whose woman she was if things did start to go too far.

  The beans were bland and the biscuit was tough and crumbly, but Silas inhaled the meal anyway. He had honestly never worked as hard in his life as he had these last two days. He had always prided himself on his good physical condition and experienced horsemanship, but now he hurt in places where he hadn’t even known he had places, and he was so tired he just wanted to lie down and never move again.

  A good night’s sleep was only wishful thinking, though. Starting last night, he had been assigned to the second two-hour shift on the night watch. The hands on watch were to keep an eye out for rustlers, of course, and though cattle usually slept at night, sometimes they didn’t, and when they didn’t, it was the night guards’ job to try to head off a stampede, and to wake the other hands if the cattle did stampede. Not that it should be hard to wake everyone else up if more than three thousand cows started running all at once.