CHAPTER 23
Cattle bawling woke him up. Harp gently kissed Kate and quietly dressed to not disturb her. Those incisive eternal cattle sounds would be with him until he loaded the last one onto the stock car in Abilene, Kansas. He finally no longer heard it after the last drive, but it took many hundreds of miles on the return trip for it to stop. His crew ate first that morning. Long joined him at the table and asked him if he had any regrets.
“Only leaving her.”
“You know you’re a lucky man. But I can see down the long road at our lives, well, yours, hers, and the kids. Katy is a special person. She bears few scars of her horrible past because she is so strong. God gave you a gift. I see you and her waltzing at governors’ balls someday in D.C., when the bad taste of the war is over and Texans are accepted again in those halls. You will come back to her this fall dancing a jig, and people will say those damn two O’Malley brothers have done it again.”
“Amen, brother. Amen.”
“What have they done again?” Katy asked, slipping onto the bench beside him.
“That’s next fall,” Long whispered to her. “When you and Harp dance in the street and those O’Malley brothers have done it again.”
“You bet and I’ll dance with you, too.”
Long rose up, leaned over, and kissed her cheek. “I’ll watch out for him, little lady.”
Hiram joined them. “I will help the others get out the gate after you’re gone.”
“Thanks. The men we have are capable enough, but any help is appreciated,” Harp told him.
“I knew Doug was a good candidate for the job. I was not around him ten minutes and I knew. But Chaw Michaels is the man impressed me the most. He not only wears that Boss of the Plains Stetson hat, he has become a boss of the plains leader since he got that job.”
“Brother here got him out of a Reb uniform, and Chaw got the rest out of theirs to save any fights on the trip last year. First thing Long told him down here, about the job, was he had to dress to be the boss on this drive and he did, didn’t he?”
“A radical change. It worked. He will be all right.”
Harp told his leader, Red Culver, to have the two black point riders to get Old Blue up and take the rag off his clapper. The two black cousins had won the point rider’s jobs competing for it. They were horseback riders deluxe. The outfit was Kansas bound.
They rode after Red, smiling. “Going to be a great day, Captain, sir.”
Harp agreed they had to be formal toward Red so they called him Captain all the time.
“We came to wish you well and we’ll see you at the end. Horses, equipment, and men all better than when we left last year,” Doug said. “I also have to thank you. Not only for firing that cook before you got to be boss last year, but the jobs you have provided us. Every one of us is damn proud to be part of the flagship of this cattle-driving business.”
“Thanks, guys. Good luck to us all.”
Cold chills ran up his cheeks as he waved to his wife standing back out of the way, then he short-loped his horse to check on his point men, leaders of the biggest herd they knew about going north.
Long planned a twelve-mile trip that day. Ira and his new camp boy, Billy, had the same team of stout horses used on the Missouri trip, pulling his completely rebuilt supply wagon with a bright new canvas top, their names on it in red.
The steers were doing some butting heads but nothing like a fresh mixed bunch. The bawling continued and a few tried for liberty but were turned back by much better horses than the last time. The worst three days lay ahead. After that, the herding business would ease a whole lot.
Noontime they reached their goal and they spread the cattle out to graze. It was an uneventful day for all. Harp liked Red’s efficiency. The boys took his commands well and he encouraged them a lot, helped the new boys, and had a settling effect on everything. From here on it would be day-by-day, head-to-tail monotony. He hoped. Harp and Red visited privately before the evening meal.
“Those cousins have good control as point riders. They damn sure can ride and they get lots out of their horses.”
“You ever hear where they learned all that?” Harp asked.
“No. But I bet they’ll tell us some day.”
“That blond boy—”
“Harold Nelson.”
“Someone said he had brought a guitar. Maybe he’d make some music after supper.”
“I’ll ask him.”
“It might build a little fellowship in the crew.”
“I’ll check it out.”
Harp went to make notes in his diary about their first day. As the shadows grew long, he put his pencil down and closed the leather-bound book. With care, he placed it back in the wooden secretary box Kate had bought him in San Antonio on their last trip. “Make a record, Harp, for your son to read someday about these days of yours on the cattle drive. When he is old enough these days will all be over. Our world is changing so fast. Tell him the inside thinking of an emerging cattle baron.”
How did an orphan learn to talk like she did? Maybe the old people who raised her instilled that in her. He and Long had read many books, Shakespeare even, but he never imagined such things like someday there would be no more cattle drives . . .
Those people will be mad you branded their cattle.
And he could not ask her a single question until he came back in the fall. He should start a list of them. He had to get to the bottom of her source of all the things she knew, he didn’t, and why. Bless her pea-picking soul—he sure loved her.
He heard the guitar and the crew singing what they knew about “leaving this valley.” Good. That might pass the time faster. At the moment the trip, looked to him, like a woodpecker trying to peck down a big oak.
Time to go to bed. “Katy, I already miss you.”