CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
On his fifth attempt at trying to throw a loop around the neck of a colt that had sunk into the muddy bogs of the shallow, ugly, but dangerous Pecos River, Jed Breen cursed to himself for this damned stupid decision to get to Precious Metal, Arizona Territory, driving forty ornery, malicious, vindictive, and headstrong mustangs that were nothing but a nuisance. Hell, he could have been bouncing around in a Concord stagecoach, maybe playing a friendly game of blackjack with a pretty lady gambler. Or gambling with a drummer with a kit of liquor samples.
“You need help?”
Breen gathered up the rope, and snapped at that tough nut Matt McCulloch, always holier than thou when in his element—and this was that damned old Ranger and horse swindler’s element. It certainly was not Jed Breen’s.
“No!” Breen snapped back without looking at the opposite bank. He might not be doing something he did well, but, by the saints, he had his pride. He wasn’t about to become the butt of jokes for the next ungodly number of miles, having to listen to Matt McCulloch and Sean Keegan ridicule his cowboying skills. Hell, that teenage Comanche kid with the badly broken arm would be laughing, too. Not to mention the prisoners Breen was hauling in for a couple of nice rewards.
“Then get to it!” McCulloch fired back. “We’re—”
“Burning daylight,” Breen finished the rest of McCulloch’s sentence, though he whispered it under his breath. Hell, McCulloch had been saying that all morning. Before morning actually, when the night remained pitch black and the only daylight to be found came in the smell of the coffee that McCulloch had started cooking thirty minutes earlier when everyone else—every person who hadn’t lost his damned mind—had been trying to sleep just a wee bit more.
The lariat came up, Breen began swinging out a loop, letting his horse carry him a few rods closer in the water but not close enough to get caught in that mud trap. Hell, that would be more than McCulloch—and Jed Breen—could take in one day. He sighed, almost whispered a prayer, and let the rope sail. The head of the bay colt ducked, snorted, twisted this way and that, and Breen swore again. He’d miss again. He ought to just draw the double-action Colt and empty every bullet into that son of a gun’s head.
Then the world moved in as though only Jed Breen, the horse he rode, the rope, and the colt remained. It slowed like the minute hands on a clock, barely perceptible. The head of the bay colt turned away from the rope, but the rope just hung in the air. The head lowered, the young horse’s nose grazing the reddish-brown water, came up. Breen swore he could see the drops of water falling from the horse’s lips and snout, dripping every so slowly and plopping between the waves the frightened, struggling animal kept making. The rope stood still, until the colt’s head jerked back up.
Breen barely noticed a damned thing for it all happened so fast. The loop sailed right over the colt’s head. Tightened as though the horse Breen rode had pulled back instinctively, which the bounty hunter suddenly realized, it had. He heard the zip as the wet hemp tightened, a snug fit against the muscular neck of the bay.
“Son of a gun!” Breen shouted. “I roped that son of a—”
Hell broke loose.
The colt tried to sit. Breen’s horse pulled back. Somehow, the bounty hunter realized to wrap the rope tightly around the horn of his saddle. That almost cost Breen a couple of fingers, which would be a severe hazard for a man who made his living with a gun. Looking back, he saw the bay’s eyes bulge and flame with anger, and the horse tried to bite at the rope, tried to pull itself out of the mud that had caught him like a bear trap.
The lariat went taut and Breen’s horse lunged away from the furious, screaming colt. For a second, Breen knew he had lost the stirrups, felt his butt lift off the saddle, and he pictured himself being plunged into the Pecos River. Not only that, he could see himself standing up in the shallow water, only to be knocked down by this horse. The rope—one end around the colt’s neck, the other wrapped tightly to the horn of Breen’s saddle—singing loudly with a zing and the rope breaking, almost slicing Breen’s head off. But that would not be the worst of it. The worst would be watching that horse take off with Breen’s saddlebags and that high-powered, straight-shooting Sharps rifle he carried in the scabbard. Taking off and loping right into a party of Comanches, Kiowas, or Apaches. They’d make off with his horse and long-distance rifle with the brass telescopic sight, leaving Breen to hear the jokes all the way to Precious Metal.
Praise the saints, that didn’t happen. He came down hard in the saddle, hard enough that he thought he might double over in agony and never entertain a lady friend again. Hard enough that he knew he would have to, secretly, check for ruptures or at least bad bruises, when he had some privacy in the camp that evening. His knees bent, his legs kicked away, and his horse bucked just a little, sending Breen’s feet back, and his boots slid perfectly back into the stirrups.
The horse turned around. Head low, it began churning, while behind Breen, the colt lunged and fought against the thickening mud. The rope pulled even tauter, and Breen leaned forward in the saddle, barely aware at how he kicked and spurred the fuming, pounding, driving horse beneath him.
He felt an amazing burst of freedom, suddenly aware that he was loping across the Pecos toward the disappearing herd of horses on the far bank, and the colt ran after him—out of the mud and into the shallows, then surging up onto the wet, sandy banks that quickly gave way to more rocks, more cactus, and more of the rough, harsh Texas land that stretched northwestward into New Mexico Territory.
On the shore, Breen pulled on the reins and let his horse stop. The colt, exhausted, shook off its wetness, shivered, and forgot all of its rage. It just stood there, allowing Breen to ride close to it, reach over, and lift the coiled, wet loop over the tired animal’s head. Breen backed his own horse up, gathered the rope, coiling it, and strapping it back underneath the horn of the saddle.
Something splashed behind him, and Breen turned suddenly, reaching for the holstered revolver but stopping when he saw the mawkish, almost obscene splinted arm of the Comanche boy. Wooden Arm stopped his pinto and grinned at Breen.
For the life of him, the bounty hunter couldn’t figure exactly why, but he laughed out loud. “Pretty good show, eh?” he heard himself saying. “Folks in St. Louis would pay twelve bits to see that in an opera house.” He twisted in the saddle to find McCulloch riding back through the cut in the slopes. His horse slowed, and the old horse trader stood in his stirrups. Breen wished he were closer so he could memorize the expression on McCulloch’s face.
A few moments later, McCulloch stopped the horse, studied Breen, the Comanche, and the bay colt. “Hell.” He shook his head. “I wasted time riding back here to help you.” He stuck his jaw out toward Wooden Arm. “Did he help you?”
“No,” Breen said, silently fuming. He had pulled that horse out himself, even made the loop over the wild animal’s neck, and he didn’t have one witness. It reminded him of all those times he had brought in dead outlaws who had not given him any chance but to use his Colt or his Sharps. And all that time, all that frustration, telling judges and solicitors and coroners and newspaper reporters over and over and over again what had happened, that it was a clear-cut case of self-defense. Well, McCulloch was a former Texas Ranger. He didn’t trust anyone.
Wooden Arm began speaking in that harsh Comanche tongue, and using the fingers on his good hand, flashing this and that to McCulloch, who shook his head, whistled, and turned back to Breen.
“The boy says . . . not exactly in these words . . . that you’ll make a top hand after all.” He spit between his teeth at a yucca plant. “Hell, I wish I’d seen it.”
“Well, boss man,” Breen said with a smile, “You didn’t know you were getting a top hand when you hired me on. You just thought I was a top gun.”
McCulloch almost turned into a verifiable human being. “Un-huh,” he said, and turned his horse around. “Maybe that cook you made me hire will make you up a special dish. To celebrate. If you got the guts to eat it.”