In the Swinging G’s main house, the meal was accounted a success by the visiting Mineral Wells ranchers. No business was talked until after the table had finally been cleared. Before their uncle tackled his guests, Dusty and Red excused themselves and left the house.
With his two nephews out of the room, Goodnight raised the subject the other ranchers were waiting to hear. That they all came from the Mineral Wells area and were, in fact, the very men Dawn planned to contact on her return home, allowed Goodnight to speak freely without the chance of embarrassing her.
On hearing Goodnight’s proposals, Wardle, Hultze, Jones and Colburn expressed their gratitude and eagerness to go along with him. More than that, Wardle made a formal apology for his past comments about Goodnight’s non-participation in the War. From that moment everything went exactly as the bearded rancher wanted. Each ranch would supply two of its cowhands, their horses and up to three hundred head of steers. That number would give Goodnight more than he needed to fill the contract, but left a margin for losses on the way. The expenses for the drive were to be shared in proportion to the number of cattle sent. At eight cents a pound on the hoof, even three hundred head would bring to their owner more money than he had seen at one time for many years. So the four ranchers knew they were getting a very good deal. In addition to giving freely of his experience, Goodnight would be providing the cook, his louse, the scout and horse wranglers. It was, as Wardle stated, a most generous offer.
‘I don’t reckon we’d best go along though,’ Wardle went on. ‘Too many chiefs in a war-party’s bad medicine, so a wise old Comanche once told me.’
A point which the other three ranchers admitted had much to recommend it. On a trail drive there could only be one boss and having four ranch owners along might prove embarrassing to Goodnight.
‘What’d be best, I reckon,’ Colburn remarked, ‘is that we send along two of our best hands, only let them know that they’re under Charlie’s orders. They’ll learn about handling a big herd on the trail and be able to show the rest of us when they get back.’
‘While they’re gone, we can be rounding up stock to go to Kansas,’ Jones continued. ‘Hey though! If Chisum knows what the Army’s paying, he might take our steers to Fort Sumner and sell them for hisself.’
‘We should maybe get after him!’ Hultze growled.
‘You could,’ Goodnight agreed. ‘Only wouldn’t it be better for you to high-tail it for your homes come morning, get your cattle here and go all out to lick him to Fort Sumner?’
‘Reckon you can do it, Charlie?’ asked Jones.
‘He won’t take just eight hundred head,’ Goodnight guessed. ‘Which means that he’ll have to gather more, either on the range or from the Long Rail. That’ll take time. So we stand a good chance of beating him. And when he gets there, your boys will be on hand to claim any stock he’s got carrying your brands.’
Clearly the idea appealed to his audience’s sense of justice. Letting out a whoop of laughter, Colburn slapped his hand on the tabletop. ‘Damned if it’s not worth risking them steers on the chance of seeing Chisum’s face when we do it.’
‘You’ll have the backing to pull it off, anyways,’ Wardle went on enthusiastically. ‘Having Cap’n Fog and John Poe along, and all.’
‘John won’t be going. He’s needed here to gather more stock to be trailed to Kansas,’ Goodnight pointed out. ‘But I’ll have Dustine as my segundo on the drive.’
None of the men objected to the arrangement and after some more talk about the drive they changed to other topics. Excusing himself, Goodnight left the room.
‘Where’s Cap’n Fog and John Poe?’ he asked a passing cowhand.
‘They rode out a piece back,’ the cowboy answered.
‘What for?’
‘I dunno. John come to the bunkhouse, put his hat, boots and gunbelt on, took his saddle and lit out with Cap’n Dusty, Red Blaze ’n’ Billy Jack.’
‘Going into town?’
‘Didn’t head that way.’
‘Blast ’em!’ Goodnight growled. ‘I wanted to fix up with them about starting the round-up tomorrow so’s we can get to it early in the morning.’
‘Likely they’ll be back,’ the cowboy answered philosophically.
If Goodnight could have seen his nephews, segundo and Billy Jack making their preparations or riding across the range, he would have been even more puzzled. Not that he worried about their absence, figuring that they had good reason for going. So he returned to his guests, satisfied that he could make all the necessary arrangements when the four returned.
With his Stetson tilted at the correct ‘jack-duce’ angle over the right eye, spur-carrying boots and low-hanging Army Colt, Poe looked ready for anything and rode a dark bay gelding noted for its skill as a cattle-handler. Dusty sat astride a small but well-made buckskin belonging to his OD Connected mount and brought along by Red and Billy Jack. The latter pair had also selected horses packed with cow-savvy from their mounts. Across Red’s saddle hung a cow’s freshly removed hide. A wooden bucket, with a tight, secure cover on it, dangled from Billy Jack’s saddle-horn and he commented bitterly every time it banged against his leg.
‘Hope you didn’t mind us butchering the cow, John,’ Red remarked, for none of them took the slightest notice of Billy Jack’s complaining. ‘It’d got a bad cut in its leg and we figured it’d be better dead.’
‘Any steers you’d’ve found, we could use in the herd,’ Poe answered. ‘Even if Dusty’s notion works.’
‘You figure it won’t work?’ Dusty inquired.
‘I’m hoping like hell it does,’ the Swinging G’s segundo stated fervently. ‘It’s sure a novel idea.’
On arrival at the herd’s bed-ground, Poe warned the night-guard to keep an extra careful watch during the hours of darkness. With the steers tired after their wild stampede, there would be little trouble from them. What Poe feared was a further attempt to scatter the cattle. After giving his orders, he pointed out twenty of the steers that were cut from their companions. He made his selection with care, picking with the ease of long practice. Among the selected score was a large ten-year-old, wide-horned animal with a dark brown body and black head and shoulders. Dusty and the two OD Connected men were to come to know that particular steer very well in the near future. xviii
‘All of ’em’s quiet and’ve been living on the home ranges,’ the foreman explained to his three companions. ‘I’d reckon Antelope Ridge’d be a good place for us to try first. The wind’ll be right for us and it’s clear of where the bunch-quitters’ll’ve gone.’
‘It’s your range, John,’ Dusty answered, knowing that such local details were beyond him. ‘Let’s get them moving.’
‘Reckon we’ll get done before night?’ Billy Jack inquired.
‘The best we can hope for is to make a start tonight,’ Poe answered.
Even that hope did not materialize. By the time they drew near to the Antelope Ridge area, the sun hung just at the lip of the western horizon. So they knew that they could not hope to put Dusty’s scheme into operation that day. Not that any of them felt especially concerned, they had brought along all the food and bedding they found necessary. Sleeping with the sky for a roof and the ground as a mattress was never such a novelty in a working cowhand’s life that it attracted comment when he found himself faced with doing it.
Making camp about half a mile from their destination, Dusty left Red and Billy Jack to bed down the cattle while he accompanied Poe on an examination of the area selected. From what Dusty saw, conditions there would be ideally favorable to his plan. He spent the last minutes of daylight fixing the geography of the location in his head. Satisfied, he and Poe returned to their companions.
‘It’s all we want,’ Dusty announced. ‘There’s open ground before the thick brush starts, but enough places for us to hide in while we’re waiting.’
‘Likely it’ll rain, or the wind’ll change,’ Billy Jack commented dolefully. ‘Something’ll go wrong for sure.’
‘Maybe you’ll die of the miseries in the night,’ Red suggested.
‘I ain’t that lucky,’ Billy Jack answered, refusing to take comfort. ‘I’ll just have to go on and on the way I am.’
Despite the lanky cowhand’s gloomy predictions, the night passed uneventfully and without any significant change in the weather conditions. Towards dawn, the men left their blankets and made a cold breakfast, for a fire would definitely ruin any hope of Dusty’s scheme working. With the food finished, they gathered the cow’s hide and bucket, then moved off on foot. Advancing cautiously towards the brush-covered side of Antelope Ridge, Dusty brought the men to a halt by a large rock about a hundred yards from the edge of the dense undergrowth.
‘Here’ll do,’ the small Texan told them, feeling the wind blowing from behind him and towards the slope. ‘Spread the hide on this rock, Cousin Red.’
‘Yo!’ Red answered, as he had so often in the past when receiving an order from his small kinsman.
Taking the hide, Red draped it with its hair inwards on the rock. Although it had dried out a little, it was still slick with blood from its removal. Stepping aside, Red allowed Billy Jack to bring up the bucket.
‘The hired help get all the worst chores,’ the lanky cowhand moaned as he removed the cover from the bucket.
‘That’s what us rich folk have hired help for,’ Dusty informed him.
Making a sour face at the odor which rose to his nostrils, Billy Jack tossed the cover aside and started to raise the bucket. A red stream of blood oozed out as Billy Jack tipped the bucket, spreading itself over the hide before forming a pool on the ground.
‘Now let’s get the cattle,’ Poe said, showing what for him was remarkable eagerness.
Returning to their comfortless camp, the four men saddled their horses and rode to where the twenty head brought from the herd were still resting. Although the steers showed some reluctance at leaving their bed-ground, they gave no sign of trying to escape. That was where Poe’s local knowledge had been so invaluable. He knew the cattle in the herd and had selected animals that were born and grew on the open ranges of the Swinging G. So they had no desire to plunge into the black chaparral, guajilla and granjeno thickets of the slope. All they wanted to do was be left to resume their sleeping or contented cud-chewing.
Keeping the steers moving slowly, Dusty and the other riders watched them approaching the hide-draped rock. Red suddenly became aware that his hands were crushing hard on the reins, while Billy Jack was almost holding his breath and forgot to complain. Even Poe exhibited anticipation and excitement. Only Dusty retained an air of complete calm, for all that he was seething inside. The next few minutes would be vital to his idea.
At last the big brown and black steer approached the rock. Pausing for a moment, which seemed to last for hours to the watching men, it sniffed the air. Then it went closer, nostrils quivering as it sucked in the odor of blood and green hide.
‘Cut loose, blast you!’ Red breathed. ‘Damn it, let’s hear you.’
Almost as if it heard, understood the words and was willing to comply, the steer tilted back its head and let out the dolorous notes of the blood call. More of the assembled longhorns caught the smell of death and gathered around the rock. Some of them pawed at the gory earth, others tilted their heads skywards and joined in their leader’s mournful bawling.
‘It’s working!’ Billy Jack enthused, dropping his pose for a moment and making an effort to recover it. ‘I’ll bet there ain’t any cattle close enough to hear them, though.’
‘It could be,’ Dusty admitted. ‘In which case, you’ll have to butcher another cow and we’ll try some other place. Come on, let’s get hid and wait to see what happens.’
During his examination of the area, Dusty had picked out places of concealment for his party. Leaving the cattle about the bloody hide, they split up and went to the points he had allotted to them. Taking cover, they dismounted and prepared for a long wait to see whether the rest of Dusty’s scheme would pay. Dusty thought that it might. Even as he swung from the buckskin’s saddle, he heard cattle in the brush echoing the eerie sound of the blood call.
On the right side of what Dusty hoped would be the trap, there was only one piece of cover large enough to conceal the waiting men. So he and Poe stood behind the same clump of cat-claw bushes. Beyond the steers, about fifty yards from where Dusty hid, Red stood behind a large rock. Billy Jack was in a hollow, shielded from sight by a growth of granjeno, close to where the brush began in earnest.
A few minutes ticked by, then Dusty saw the first of the longhorns emerge from the brush. Loping into view, it headed for the rock and had barely arrived before more cattle left cover.
Slowly the sun started to creep above the eastern rims and the darkness faded away. Yet the blood call continued to vibrate miserably across the range, growing in volume as other longhorns gathered to investigate. They came from the thorny thickets, or trotting across the open land, animals in every stage of development, all drawn as if by a magnet.
Wild excitement filled the cattle. Driven by their frantic eagerness, they thrust and pushed at each other in attempts to reach the centre of the crowd. Pawing or tearing at the ground, some of them sent the blood-soaked earth flying into the air. Others reared, almost climbing over their more fortunate companions as they tried to get closer. On the fringes of the growing crowd, cows, calves or steers too light to force their way into the crush, circled around and bawled out bitter protests at being so deprived.
Concealed in their places behind the cat-claw bushes, Dusty and Poe looked at the scene. A growing sense of elation wore away the awe which filled them at what they had started. The latter man, particularly, stared at the sight. Poe could not help wondering why the hell nobody had previously thought of using the blood call as a means of gathering cattle.
‘It’s the damnedest thing I ever saw, Dusty!’ Poe breathed. ‘You’ve come up with the right answer.’
‘I sure hope so,’ Dusty replied. ‘I’ll bet Uncle Charlie’s set to roast our hides for not telling him what we planned to do, or that we’d be away all night.’
‘He’ll not worry about that when he sees what we’ve gathered,’ Poe guessed. ‘Damn it, there’re ladinos coming out of the brush that we’ve never managed to catch again since they were de-prided and turned loose.’
That was a factor of major importance to Poe. The ladinos were outlaw cattle smart enough to realize that the thickly grown thorn brush country offered them immunity against their human enemies. So they moved in, adapting to a way of life far removed from that of their open-range kin. Such creatures developed the survival instincts of much-hunted whitetail deer. Normally they were so acutely cautious that they only crept out to graze on the open country during the hours of darkness. They returned to the brush with the first glow of daylight, or fled immediately to safety at the first hint of danger. Only the attraction of the blood call drew them out and sufficiently lulled their senses to make catching them remotely possible.
‘What do you reckon, John?’ Dusty whispered after almost an hour.
Studying the longhorns which were still milling, pushing and shoving about the rock, Poe tried to listen to the sounds rising from the brush. Deep in the thorn thickets, more cattle sounded their answers to the mournful racket of those already on the scene. However, the sounds came from far away. There were other factors to be balanced against waiting for the distant callers to gather.
‘I’d say we take what we’ve got, Dusty,’ the foreman decided. ‘There’re over a hundred head out there and, with luck, at least half of them’ll be steers. If we wait, we may lose them.’
‘That’s what I figure,’ Dusty admitted. ‘I’ll let Red and Billy Jack know to get ready.’
While Poe went to his patiently waiting horse, Dusty cautiously inched himself into sight of the other two. He attracted their attention and they withdrew to collect their mounts. Grinning slightly, as he wondered what Billy Jack was figuring on going wrong, Dusty backed out of sight.
After tightening the girths and making everything ready, Dusty swung astride the buckskin. He unstrapped the forty-foot-long, hard-plaited Manila rope from the saddle horn. Before he offered to ride out, he prepared the rope for use. His right hand gripped just under the honda—the spliced, leather-coated eyelet in the business end of the rope—and gave a few jerks forward. Doing so caused the noose to open out to a usable size, ready for throwing. A glance to his left told him that Poe was duplicating his actions and he knew that Red and Billy Jack would also be shaking out their loops in preparation for any roping that was needed while gathering up the spoils of the blood call.
Exchanging a nod with Poe, Dusty set off to reap the harvest of his idea. The hide and blood of the butchered cow had brought a number of cattle together around the rock and still held their attention. Yet all still might come to nothing. A premature or awkward appearance by the men might send most of the assembled longhorns racing for safety.
With that in mind, the men stretched forward alongside the necks of their horses and hoped that doing so would delay the moment when the cattle recognized them for what they were. They also held their mounts to a steady, aimless-seeming walk instead of dashing into sight. Wanting to make their net as tight as possible, Red and Poe made for the rock while the other two kept to the fringe of the brush.
Carefully, without hurry, noise or commotion, the men converged on the cattle. A slight movement in the brush caught Dusty’s eye. Turning his head, he saw the face of a cougar peering from among the undergrowth. Attracted by the sounds of the cattle and scent of blood, the mountain lion had stalked up in the hope of snatching a meal. With the wind blowing towards it, its scent had not reached the longhorns around the rock. Finding itself observed, the big cat turned and faded away silently.
Already the blood spilled on the ground had been horn-hooked and hoof-churned almost into oblivion and the bloody hide was losing most of its attraction. Fortunately, by that time the tamer steers brought as decoys from the herd had been forced, or had moved voluntarily, to the edge of the assembly. Being used to the sight of men, they raised no alarm over the approaching riders.
Aided by the same steers, the four men started the cattle moving. Not until a half mile or more separated them from the brush did the first of the ladinos begin to realize their danger. If the awareness had come simultaneously, all might been lost. Luckily the inborn herd instincts dulled the ladinos’ perceptions. Taking comfort from the company of their kind, they allowed themselves to be hazed farther and farther from safety.
Then one of the steers became aware of what was happening. Twisting out of the gather, it tried to escape. At a signal, Dusty’s buckskin sprang to head off the bunch-quitter. Coming alive in the small Texan’s hands, the rope flew through the air. Finding its forefeet suddenly trapped, the ladino crashed to the ground with some force. On rising dazedly, after being freed from the encircling noose, the animal went willingly to rejoin its companions.
That was not the only attempt at flight. If the animal making it was a cow, bull or too young for their purposes, it would be allowed to go. Not so any steer. When one suitable for shipment tried to escape, it found its efforts frustrated by a fast-riding man with a well-trained horse and a rope which seemed almost a living being eager to obey its user’s will and enforce his demands. Even the most ardent brush-popping ladino needed only to be busted to the ground once with a forefoot catch xix to learn the wisdom of obedience.
At last the shipping herd came into sight. Any indication Goodnight might have felt at his nephew’s and segundo’s absence died when he saw what they brought with them. Riding to meet them, he recognized several notorious ladinos among the cattle and figured one of the quartet had come up with a mighty smart notion for solving his problem of replacing the stock lost in the stampede.
‘Well,’ Red said in a challenging manner as he let Billy Jack come alongside him. ‘It didn’t rain, the wind didn’t change and we got ’em here without losing a single steer.’
‘I’ll bet they all die off with the “big jaw”,’ the lanky cowhand replied.
It took a lot to make Billy Jack give up and look at the bright side of life.