CHAPTER TWELVE
McCulloch let Wooden Arm lead the way, admiring how the Comanche boy sat in the white man’s saddle, how far he could lean to either side, studying the ground for sign. If McCulloch tried to lean that far, he would have been tasting gravel. And Wooden Arm had only one good arm to use.
The former Texas Ranger did not spend the entire morning marveling over the boy’s ability on horseback. Keeping the Winchester repeater handy, he looked at the sky and saw the white smoke puffing into the cloudless blue above the mountains. That wasn’t a campfire. It wasn’t a forest fire. The wisps of smoke rose at intervals, and he knew it was a signal fire. White men didn’t do that. Scalp hunters definitely wouldn’t give away their location. So it had to be Indians. Comanches? Kiowas? Apaches?
When he and the boy stopped around noon for jerky, stale crackers, and water, Wooden Arm signed, I know you saw the smoke.
I am not blind, McCulloch signed his guide.
The myth, of course, courtesy of hack writers churning out dime novels about Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, and other frontier adventurers, was that Indians conversed with smoke the way the army used Morse code. In reality, the smoke was used just to let someone know someone was around.
McCulloch made the sign of the snake, which meant Comanches.
The boy grinned and shrugged, which caused him to flinch from the pain in his busted arm.
Maybe we should rest, McCulloch signed.
Wooden Arm’s head shook savagely, and he motioned with his good arm toward the area where the smoke signals had been seen. Perhaps they are Comanche, the boys hands and fingers said, but they could be my enemies. I would like to find our mustangs and get out of these mountains.
“So would I.” McCulloch did not have to use his hands and fingers. Wooden Arm understood those words simply from the tone.
McCulloch tightened the cinches of both horses, and offered to assist Wooden Arm, but the boy shook his head and practically leaped into the saddle. He said something in his own tongue and squirmed around until he managed to find something that might not have been comfortable to a teenage Comanche but was the best he was going to do. If Matt McCulloch spoke Comanche, he figured he might have blushed at the blasphemy Wooden Arm showered upon big Texas saddles.
“Well,” McCulloch said as he swung into his saddle, “If it were the other way around, and I had to sit in a Comanche saddle, my backside would be raw and my huevos would be blue.”
Wooden Arm stared, and McCulloch signed what he had said.
The boy cackled with delight, and kept breaking into fits of laughter for the next five minutes as they followed a deer trail up and over a gentle slope.
* * *
Holding the reins to the black in his left hand, McCulloch broke open the turd and rubbed it with his fingers, which he wiped on his chaps before looking up at Wooden Arm, still mounted. The wide grin that stretched across Wooden Arm’s face was practically a reflection of McCulloch’s own bright smile. He nodded at the entrance to the canyon.
Wooden Arm glanced, his head likewise bobbing, and turned back to the horse trader before dismounting easily despite the heavy splints encumbering his arms. I will go, he signed.
Before McCulloch answered, the boy continued. You smell like a Texan.
Once again, the Comanche noun for Texan was not overly complimentary.
I am Comanche. I smell like a horse. Your stink will scare off this herd.
“All right.” McCulloch nodded toward the canyon.
The boy sprinted like a deer, ignoring the pain that must have shot up and down his busted arm.
Once the boy had disappeared, McCulloch pulled the horses to the edge of the mountain wall, so he would be hard to see if anyone was watching from the ridges above. He had not seen any more smoke, but he figured to play things safe. He hadn’t survived long in this country by being careless. His left hand held the reins to Wooden Arm’s horse. The right kept a firm hold on the reins to the black. The right hand also gripped the Colt revolver.
How much time passed, McCulloch wasn’t sure, for he had never been one to watch the minute hands on a clock, and he had been too busy looking for any signs of danger to get an idea of the location of the sun. But he saw Wooden Arm running lightly out of the canyon’s mouth—and he had not heard a damn thing. That boy, splinted arm and all, would make a damned good warrior. McCulloch certainly wouldn’t want to meet him in these mountains in a couple of years.
Without even needing to catch his breath, despite being bathed in sweat, and his mouth tight from the pain in his busted arm, Wooden Arm started up the conversation immediately. The kid was not one to beat around the bush.
There is a spring. Good water. The boy grinned widely and rubbed his stomach. He continued. More than six herds come here for water. It is hard to read the signs for they have been coming to this spring for a long time.
McCulloch needed Wooden Arm to repeat part of that before he got the gist of what the Comanche was saying, and the boy promised to slow down with his hand and fingers, but it was hard because he was so excited. McCulloch smiled. He had been doing this far longer than Wooden Arm had been alive, but he understood that feeling. He felt his own excitement hard to conceal.
One herd is small. Eight. Ten. Twelve horses. One is huge. Perhaps as many as sixty.
“Sixty.” McCulloch whistled, before he began to shake his head. “That’s too many for the two of us to handle.” He did not sign that, but the disappointment in Wooden Arm’s eyes told McCulloch that the boy understood.
We can set a trap, Wooden Arm signed. For the herd that you say is right for us.
After McCulloch nodded, they reined their horses and went to work.
* * *
Sitting in the trees that lined the canyon’s mouth, Wooden Arm pointed at the Winchester cradled across McCulloch’s lap. Do you use that . . . on the stallion? the boy’s fingers and good hand asked.
McCulloch shook his head. Some mustangers would try to shoot the lead stallion of a herd, not to kill it, but to stun the horse. Then they’d capture the stallion and the others. He knew one or two men who were extremely good at that. But it was too damned risky, and more than a few greenhorns who thought they were the best sharpshooter since William Tell had killed many an innocent mustang stallion. McCulloch used his hands to let the boy know that he preferred to capture his horses the way of the warrior. Guns were made for hunting—and for staying alive in this rough world.
The kid nodded solemnly.
They had led their horses up and over the ridge, tucking them in a hollow and securing them so they would not wander off and would be hard to steal without making a lot of noise. As long as the wind didn’t change directions, their horses wouldn’t catch the scent of the mustangs—and vice versa—whenever the wild herds showed.
As both boy and horse trader had expected, the first herd showed up at dusk. The stallion, a proud blood bay, stopped a good distance from the narrow entrance to the canyon that led to the spring. Sniffed. Pawed. Rode this way and that, shaking its head. When a young colt, impatient with thirst, tried to bolt to the canyon, the stallion charged and rammed the young black hard, knocking it down. The horse rolled over, came to its feet, and cowered as the stallion reared, letting its forelegs kick the air with a fury of violence. It was enough to send the black colt back to rear of the herd.
Five minutes passed before the stallion whickered, and galloped toward the entrance. The rest of the horses followed, and both the Comanche and the Texan had to turn their heads from the dust.
Once that had settled, the boy looked greedily at McCulloch, who shook his head. This was the large herd, far too many for a man and a boy with a badly broken arm to handle, even if the boy was a Comanche. Although Wooden Arm could not hide his disappointment, he slowly nodded for he understood. When the mustang stallion led its mares, colts, and fillies out of the canyon an eternity later, Wooden Arm signed to McCulloch, I hope they did not drink all the water.
Laughing, McCulloch picked up his canteen and tossed it to the Comanche teen.
The next herd was too small. The one after that McCulloch dismissed because the stallion, a dun, seemed too old, and the coats of the mares and younger horses did not pass the horseman’s muster. Besides, one of the offspring looked to be more ass than mustang, and the horses were gaunt, easy pickings for a bear or pack of wolves. They let these drink and leave.
By then the sun was beginning to sink, and McCulloch wondered if the other herds had found another watering hole, for this one surely drew a large crowd.
Maybe there were some night herds, McCulloch began to think, and the others would not come until the moon rose—if they came at all.
Both Texan and Comanche raised their heads and stared into the thickening darkness. Both had heard the whinny of a horse. A pinto stallion appeared. It pranced around, sniffing, suspicious, and chased away two thirsty colts. Wooden Arm could not stifle his gasp of amazement. Tensing, McCulloch froze, wondering if the stallion had heard the noise, for horses had amazing hearing. Apparently not. The pinto came prancing forward, but stopped again, turned and ran back to the herd. Biting off his curse, McCulloch waited, sweated, feeling the heart slamming against his ribs and chest muscles.
Hell, Matt McCulloch even crossed his fingers.
A long time passed, then the pinto stallion whinnied, reared, and galloped off—the other horses following. Their hooves thundered past and when the last of the stragglers entered the canyon, McCulloch nodded. Quickly, he and Wooden Arm slid one juniper branch across the entrance. Then another. Another. Working furiously until they had made a gate ten feet high.
The noise, however, had alerted the pinto, for it came charging back, head low, eyes blazing, and rammed into the fence the Comanche and Texan had made. The logs quaked but did not break. The stallion went down, came up, shook its head and ran as though it planned to leap over the fence, but there was not enough room for a horse to make that jump. It slid to a stop at the last moment, then turned around, and began kicking the juniper poles with its rear hooves. Kicking, snorting, squealing. An older colt ran to help, but the pinto, furious, bit the claybank’s neck. As leader of this herd, the pinto was not going to let this younger male take over. He had too much pride, too much strength, and too much power. The claybank reared, almost tried to fight, but relented, and trotted back to the water hole.
For four hours, the mustang stallion fought until it was blooded and defeated. But the juniper posts remained, and the defeated animal snorted, turned, head down, and walked wearily back to the water hole.
It was too dark to read hand signs now, so McCulloch spoke quietly, “Let’s get our horses back over here.” He walked toward the path that led over the hill, and Wooden Arm understood. He followed.
An hour later, they sat in a cold camp, gnawing on jerky and drinking water from the canteens, staring at the gate they had built.
Other herds arrived with the moon’s rise, but saw and smelled the humans, and galloped off toward Limpia Creek or some other water hole.
McCulloch looked at the moon, then at the gate he and Wooden Arm had managed to build, and finally at his Comanche partner. “Tomorrow, the fun begins.”
He didn’t need to use hand signs or speak Comanche for the boy to understand.
Wooden Arm’s head nodded with a solemnity that was erased by his gleaming smile.