If there was one thing Toby Bishop didn’t crave, it was responsibility for other lives.
He’d traveled that route more than once, though never as a landowner, and the results were mostly negative.
Tonight, he had first watch, along with Curly Odom and Deke Sullivan. He’d caught a break when Graham Lott drew an assignment to the second shift, sparing Bishop from uninvited monologues.
Three drovers at a time kept eyes on Mr. Dixon’s stock for a three-hour turn, then packed it in when their replacements came on duty. During those three hours, men on watch spread out and circulated, singing to the animals if they felt like it, otherwise just watching out for danger in the dark.
A threat requiring action might be animal or human. Coyotes and the like would be repelled by any means required or shot if they refused to take a hint. A human prowler, on the other hand, shouldn’t expect a chance to cut and run.
There was no good reason for anyone to sneak around a herd once it was bedded down. Therefore guards on night watch assumed that any trespassers were armed and nursing bad intentions. Rustling ranked first among the possibilities for devilment, but Bishop had heard tales of drifters looting chuck wagons—and once about a drover who was stalked and murdered on a cattle drive by the brothers of a girl he’d left with child.
Orders were simple when it came to lurking strangers. Order them to stand fast for a meeting with the trail boss, tossing any weapons that they might be carrying. A prowler who attacked or tried to flee was forfeiting his life. Cowboys who couldn’t bring themselves to pull a trigger normally weren’t hired.
Bishop had no qualms about shooting if it came to that, no fear that it would spoil his sleep, but as he mounted Compañero, he was hoping that his shift would pass without that need.
An hour into it, he thought his luck had soured.
Deke Sullivan was crooning to the herd, an off-key but passable “Oh! Susanna,” circling around to Bishop’s south, some eighty yards distant. Curly Odom was riding to the east of Dixon’s lowing herd, marked by the glowing ember of a hand-rolled smoke.
So, who or what was moving in the brush ahead of Bishop and a little to his left?