by Kyra Halland
After another league or so, a shadow took shape up ahead on the starlit grasslands, likely a thicket of trees growing along a stream. “Try not to let them get in there,” Lainie called to Silas. They shouted at the cattle and fired into the ground at their hooves and struck out with the cattle quirts, trying to turn them, but the animals rumbled straight on into the thicket with a crunching sound of breaking branches.
And then, maybe because the cattle knew they were finally safe, or maybe just because they were worn out, they stopped running. Silas and Lainie dismounted and walked the horses up close to the thicket. Even in the faint starlight, they could see that the dense copse of thorny trees sprawled much farther back than had been apparent from a distance. Inside their prickly fortress, the cattle stood mooing and panting. A distinctive sharp, bitter smell reached Silas’s nose.
“Damn,” Lainie said. “Blister trees. Getting them out of there’s gonna be a bitch.”
Silas had to agree with her assessment. “Yep.”
“It’ll be easier if we wait till daylight, and they ain’t going anywhere for now, so we might as well get some rest,” Lainie went on. “We’re going to be busy tomorrow getting all the stock rounded up and counted again.”
Silas shrugged off his duster and spread it on the ground for a blanket, while Lainie rolled her coat up into a pillow. They lay down, Lainie resting in the crook of Silas’s arm, her head on his shoulder. It felt good to have her lying beside him. “I’ve missed you at night,” he said.
“I’ve missed you too. You should come see me in the wagon.”
“You’re asleep by the time I get off my watch shift, and since you have to be up before everyone else, I figure it’s better to let you sleep.”
She rolled over and kissed him. He put his arms around her and held her close as he deepened the kiss. He lost himself in the feel and taste of her, and pent-up desire stirred inside him. It would be a shame to waste this chance, he thought. But they were both worn out, and there was no guarantee some of the other cowhands – or cattle – wouldn’t stumble across them. He forced himself to break the kiss, and she made a small disappointed sound.
“We’ll be at Forn’s Crossing in another nineday or so,” he said. “Maybe we can get a hotel room one night while we’re there. Endis is talking about giving most of the hands a night off.”
“Let’s do that, if the Bingtons will give me the night off too.”
They settled themselves more comfortably for sleep, and Silas let himself surrender to his exhaustion.
The next moment, it seemed like, Lainie was shaking him awake and the sky above him was growing light with dawn. “Come on,” Lainie said. “We’d better get these cattle back to the herd and see how many more are missing. It’s gonna be a long day.”
Silas stood up, groaning. Every muscle in his body seemed to have stiffened up after the night’s hard ride. The chilly dawn air and the dampness of the dew that had settled over him didn’t help. Maybe he was getting too old for this business of sleeping outside on the ground. He and Lainie ate some flatbread and jerky from his saddlebags and drank from their water flasks, then walked over to the thicket to survey the task that lay ahead of them.
“Damn,” Lainie said again. She sighed. “Well, nothing for it but to get on with it.”
They pulled on their coats, gloves, and leggings, and ventured into the thick growth of thorny trees. Blister trees were well-named; a slight scratch from their thorns would result in a rash of itchy, painful blisters. As he and Lainie thrashed though the prickly growth, Silas gained a greater appreciation of what the close-fitting leather leggings were good for besides setting off Lainie’s backside to fine advantage. Still, in spite of their boots, hats, leggings, coats, and gloves, the thorns still seemed to find every uncovered spot of skin and work through every small gap and seam in their clothes.
The cattle stood huddled together near a stream running through the thicket, munching on the grass growing around the trees and staring at Silas and Lainie in an entirely disaffected way. Cattle had a resistance to whatever it was that caused the blisters and didn’t seem to mind the sharp, bitter scent of the leaves and sap. This seemed entirely unfair to Silas. If he ever had the chance to have a word or two with the Maker, he promised himself he would bring it up.
“Hah, get on now!” Lainie shouted, whacking one of the cows on the hindquarters. It ignored her. She went on slapping cattle on the flanks and yelling at them, and Silas joined her. Whether it was his deeper voice or the fact that he could hit harder or just that the cattle didn’t like him – or maybe it was the small jolt of magic he added to his blows – he finally got one to budge.
Once the first animal was moving, it didn’t take too long for the others to follow. Unfortunately, the direction the lead animal chose was toward the far edge of the thicket. Getting the cattle to turn around in the thick growth proved impossible even when Silas and Lainie tried shooting into the dirt, so they had no choice but to beat their way all the way through to the other side.
Moving was much easier after the cattle emerged from the sharp, grasping branches of the thorn trees. With more shouting and slapping, Silas and Lainie drove them back around to the other side of the thicket, where Abenar and Mala were waiting. With the cattle rounded up, checked for the co-op’s brand, and pointed in the right direction, Silas and Lainie mounted up. Silas clenched his hands on the reins to keep himself from rubbing at the painful rashes that were already coming up on every bit of exposed skin as well as in places where he had thought he was well-protected. Scratching the blisters would only spread the irritating toxin. “Stupid cows,” he grumbled.
“I’m not sure about that,” Lainie said. She started to scratch at her own arm, then caught herself. “They’re not the ones that are tired, hungry, and itchy. Mrs. Bington has salve for the rashes, if you can stand it till we get back. Or do you know a charm to stop the itching?”
“I do, but it’ll look suspicious if we show up covered with blister tree leaves and smelling of it but not itching.”
“You’re right,” Lainie sighed. She raised her hand to a patch of red on her face then forced it back down again.
“Speaking of magic, though,” Silas asked as they started driving their small contingent of cattle back to the main herd, “did you sense any mages around last night before the stampede?”
“No. Do you think mages might have started it?”
“It occurred to me, but I didn’t sense any, either.”
“I guess we’ll know better after the cattle are counted, if rustlers had anything to do with it. Though they could be Plain rustlers, I guess.”
“The less trouble with rustlers, mages or Plain, the better I like it. I’m not looking forward to counting all those damned cows again, though.”
“Welcome to the life of a cowhand,” Lainie said with a weary grin.
An hour or so later, they reached the main herd, where other hands had been coming in since sunrise with bunches of runaways. After a break to get their blisters treated by Mrs. Bington, Silas headed back out to help round up the rest of the cattle while Lainie started work on an early supper for the tired, hungry hands.
Once the hands had brought in all the cattle they were able to find, a count showed that about sixty head were still missing, so the men were sent back out to find them. Silas’s tracking skills soon revealed that the tracks left by one of the largest bunches of cattle that had been recovered, a couple of hundred head, overlay an earlier set of tracks left by a smaller number of cattle running in the same direction. He and a team of hands followed the trail to another extensive thicket of trees – not blister trees this time, thanks be to all the gods – where the recovered cattle had been found. In the poorer light of early morning, this would have appeared to be the end of the trail, but the full daylight revealed signs that other cattle had kept going all the way through the thicket. Silas and his team followed the trail to the far side of the thicket and picked up the tracks left by th
e missing group of cattle. The tracks continued on another five leagues, coming close to a low clump of hills, where they found the missing cattle resting and grazing near a stream. A quick count and inspection of the brands revealed that all the missing animals were accounted for.
“Guess it’s a handy thing to have a bounty hunter in the crew, even if he is a greenfoot!” said one of the hands who had been suspicious of Silas’s former profession on the day of the muster.
Silas grinned, more pleased with the praise than he wanted to admit. “Glad I could be of help.”
They drove the cattle back to the camp, where another count confirmed that every last animal had been found. A lingering burden of worry lifted from Silas’s mind; it looked like no rustlers had been involved, or mages, either. With a cheer, the exhausted hands headed for the grub wagon as the sun sank low in the west.
At the serving table, Lainie was getting ready to dish up the stew that had been cooking all day. The hands lined up, swapping stories and bragging about how they had handled the most stubborn runaways. Silas hung back a bit, watching her. Though she was every bit as tired and dirty as the men, she smiled and laughed as she served up plates of stew and dumplings and joined in the storytelling. The hands complimented her on her herding skills – and on how good she looked in the leather leggings – and a sudden, disconcerting sense of not belonging, of being separate from everything that was going on around him, came over Silas. This was Lainie’s world. She had grown up with men like these, doing this kind of work. She and the hands spoke the same language, knew the same life. This was what she had been born to, not the life of a mage in Granadaia or an outlaw.
An unwelcome ache swelled in his throat and behind his eyes. He had torn her away from everything she knew and loved and put her in danger. If he hadn’t taken her away, she wouldn’t be an outlaw now. Even as he had the thought, he knew he was being ridiculous; the mere fact of her being a mage put her in danger both from Plains and from any other mage who found her, as someone was bound to do sooner or later. By taking her away with him, he had done the best and only thing he could do for her. But he couldn’t help wondering, if it hadn’t been for that danger, if there had been any other choice, would she still have chosen him? If the threats to her safety suddenly disappeared, would she still want to be with him? Or would she return to the life she had left behind without a second thought for him?
“Silas!”
Lainie’s voice calling his name caught him out of his melancholy thoughts. He looked towards the serving table and saw her waving him over.
“You tell them,” she said as he walked up to the table. “Almost fifty head, all bunched up in that blister tree thicket. Just standing there, like in a stronghold, and they was never going to come back out.” She looked at him, her eyes shining and her face flushed with laughter as she waited for him to take up her tale.
The sense of being a stranger in her life faded away. “You mean these boys don’t flush cattle out of blister tree thickets all the time?” Silas asked. “And it was a good fifty cattle if it was one.” He went on, telling the slightly embellished story of his and Lainie’s part in the stampede and roundup while Lainie fed the hungry men, her face glowing as she watched and listened to him.
Chapter 5
THE MOON CAME back, starting a new month, and life on the drive returned to normal as the herd approached the White Rock River, the first major river crossing on the trail, and the town of Forn’s Crossing. After conducting himself so well during the stampede and subsequent roundup, Silas was advanced to taking turns riding alongside the herd farther up instead of always being at the rear. As well, at the insistence of Endis and Landstrom, Lainie was allowed to do even more of the cooking. The hard-working hands had done themselves proud, not losing a single head of cattle in the stampede, and if they wanted Lainie’s spicier dishes and lighter biscuits, then that was what they would get. With all due respect to Mrs. Bington and her own excellent cooking, of course.
In spite of the bosses’ diplomacy, Mrs. Bington was not happy about the decree. Besides turning over more of the cooking to Lainie, she also left Lainie to do most of the serving and the bulk of the cleanup while she occupied herself with “reorganizing” the supplies in the wagons and other such busywork. Every night, Silas offered to help, but Lainie always shooed him away to get his few hours’ rest before his turn on watch. When Mr. Bington offered to dry some of the dishes one evening, Mrs. Bington smacked him on the shoulder and said, “Haven’t you finished counting those bags of beans yet? We’ll be at Forn’s Crossing before you know it.”
Meekly, Bington went back to helping Mrs. Bington take inventory of the supply wagons, leaving Lainie to finish up the dishes on her own as Silas headed out for the night watch.
Lainie dealt with it all with a steadfast cheer and politeness, even when she looked so tired that Silas didn’t see how she could still be on her feet. She deferred to Mrs. Bington’s whims, and gave the older woman credit for the food whenever she could. When Mrs. Bington got frustrated trying to remember her name, Lainie even told her to just call her by her given name, a familiarity usually reserved for close friends and family members.
One day, about fed up with Mrs. Bington’s treatment of Lainie, Silas cornered Lainie alone. “How’re you holding up, darlin’? Want me to have a word with Endis for you?”
She smiled. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. It’s a lot of work, but I’m used to it. I’d rather be busy than bored. And anyhow, with Mrs. Bington out from under foot, I can do things my own way.”
Indeed, Lainie had quickly trained the hands to bring their own dishes to the washing table instead of leaving them scattered all over the camp. And though all the hands, ages fifteen to fifty, married men and bachelors alike, still flirted with her, the threat of not getting fed had moderated the flirting to levels that Silas considered much more acceptable. Instead of being managed by Mrs. Bington, Silas realized proudly, Lainie was the one doing the managing, and doing very well.
Several days out from the White Rock River, heavy clouds moved in over the hills to the north. Endis, Landstrom, and the more experienced hands eyed the storm-shrouded hills with concern; storms this time of year were more likely to bring rain than snow, which would flood the rivers and creeks with runoff from the hills. Slowly, over the next few days, the storm spread from the hills down into the lowlands, bringing high winds and cold, drenching rains. A day away from the White Rock, the outriders who had been sent to scout out the river crossing returned to report that it was impassable.
The cattle were unhappy in the wet, cold weather and refused to bed down that night, which meant that all the hands had to pull double shifts on night watch. The weather had the crew feeling almost as morose and unsettled as the cattle. No one sang; only the pounding of rain and rushing of the wind filled the night.
In the dark and the rain, Silas sat in the saddle, shivering, his hat and rain cape dripping. As much out of boredom and misery as because he thought he would find something, he reached out with his mage senses to see if the storm might be driven by magic. Holding up the herd at a flooded river crossing would provide another good opportunity for a couple of rogue mages to make mischief.
He didn’t sense the aura of power that would accompany a storm generated or enhanced with magic; as well, manipulating a storm this size would require half a dozen or more mages working together, and he didn’t sense any mages in the area. Neither could he imagine that many rogue mages joining forces. Still, there could be Wildings-born mages around, suppressing their power and waiting for a chance to take advantage of the storm.
The next day, as the rain continued to fall, the herd reached the swollen, rushing White Rock River. The cattle crossing, which lay about a day north of the town of Forn’s Crossing, was a wide but normally shallow spot in the river with a small island at about the halfway point, which was now buried in the flood. There was a bridge and a ferry at the town, but these were insufficient for gett
ing more than three thousand head of cattle across the river. Endis, Landstrom, and the other men who had taken this trail before estimated that the river at the crossing was at least twice its normal width and a good measure and a half over its usual depth, and that even after the rain stopped they would have to wait at least two or three days if not longer for the water to recede enough to allow a safe crossing.
So the outfit hunkered down to wait out the rain, trapped against an impassable river, drive hands and cattle equal in their sodden misery. All the trail hands were instructed to keep their six-shooters loaded, dry, and to hand, and to watch for rustlers and bandits who might take advantage of their plight. As well, Silas searched yet again for mages in the area, and found nothing.
He chafed at the delay. Besides his worries about rustlers and rogue mages, he had been looking forward to the stop at Forn’s Crossing. The local house ladies would distract the hands from Lainie and help them work off some of their pent-up energy, and he and Lainie could grab a hotel room for the night. In the nearly three full ninedays of the drive so far, they hadn’t been able to spend a single night together. It had been far too long, and he wanted her so bad it was starting to hurt.
The cattle were quiet that afternoon, too wet and miserable to even think of wandering off. Silas returned the horse he was on to the remounts, then sloshed his way through mud and puddles to the grub wagon, where a canopy had been put up over the cookfire and serving table. Lainie, wearing an apron embroidered with ugly kittens, and Mrs. Bington, in a complementary apron covered with misshapen puppies, were tending a steaming pot of chickroot brew and chatting with a couple of hands who were hanging around. The herd’s cattlehounds were huddled in the relative warmth and dryness under the table. As Silas watched the cozy scene, that strange feeling of being an intruder in Lainie’s world started to worm itself into his heart again.
Lainie spotted him, and a smile lit up her face. “Come have a hot cup,” she called over to him.
