Back to either side of the point, riders rode the swing riders, who could swing the column either way by crowding the head of it, but, as a rule, just tried to keep the lead cows bunched close and following the chosen route.
The flank riders trailed behind the swing riders down either side of the column to function much the same, save for having no say as to which way they were all going. Flank riders mostly kept stock from busting out of the herd to go in business on their own. A good flank rider never let a critter bust too far out of line. When he had to go tearing after them he wasn't a good flank rider, or else he was after a really bad critter. Young steers strayed worse than cows or calves with mommas. Nothing strayed worse than a doggie or orphan calf, and you hardly ever drove breeding bulls off their home ranges.
The necessary but unhappy drag riders brought up the rear, making certain no critters straggled as they got to ride through all the cow shit and most of the dust stirred up by the herd. It was the best chore for new students of the beef industry because you got to cope with the old and tired critters bringing up the drag instead of the wilder and meaner ones who tended to push forward. It was no accident that the word “bossy” came from an ancient word for cows.
As they followed what seemed a wagon trace through chaparral, Longarm saw they were setting a fair pace for beef on the hoof. He didn't ask why. This wasn't his first trail drive. He knew lots of trail bosses liked to move them as much as twenty-five miles the first day, albeit fifteen miles a day, or half the distance of a day's cavalry ride, was considered best for cows. Moving them fast and tight together at first was a fair way to trail-break or steady them down before you settled into a more comfortable steady drift, driving them some and grazing them some through the day and bedding them in a tighter bunch after dark when things went bump in the night and it was safer to circle and sing to them.
Seeing he had the chance and how they had so much more chapparal down this way, Longarm broke out the plain bat-wing chaps he'd brought from Denver and buckled them on as neither Connie nor Slim asked why. Professional chaps were made to be put on or off in the saddle without having to dismount. You had to put on shotgun chaps like pants. But he only had to buckle the batwings around his waist with a big floppy wing on either thigh and then simply snap the three fasteners down either thigh as far as the knees to be all set. But he was hoping he wouldn't have to ride through any of that sticker bush to the north or south as they drove ever onward into the sunrise under a cloudless sky that promised a West Texas scorcher.
He'd lit a cheroot and things were just settling down, perhaps two miles east of the Deveruex-Lopez home spread but still on their land grant when the low constant drumming of hooves was suddenly split by a single rifle shot.
One shot could be all that it took when six hundred young steers had never been given time to settle down. So Longarm didn't see why Connie Deveruex was yelling, “Stampede!” at the top of her lungs when anyone could see all hell was busting loose!”
Chapter 17
Longarm wheeled his wall-eyed paint to his right as he yelled at the gal seated sidesaddle to ride straight ahead at full gallop. He saw Slim Gonzales wheeling the other way. He'd thought old Slim knew which end of a longhorn the shit fell out of. He was mightly glad he'd slipped on his batwings as he and the paint left the trail at a dead run.
When you rode a horse through chaparral it looked after its own hide and you were supposed to look out for yourself. No horse with a lick of sense would tear through a thorn-lined gap too small for it to navigate. If its rider's legs were spread wider, no horse gave a shit. So the mesquite thorns to either side clawed considerable at the floppy leather armor of his chaps, as the heavier leather
tapaderas
covering his stirrups played hell with lower catsclaw, Spanish bayonet and such.
He spied that pain in the ass, El Moro, still being a pain in the ass out ahead as he waved his big sombrero and cussed at all those longhorns headed his way at full steam.
“
Pero no!
Fall back and try to get 'em to chase you!” Longarm yelled above the thunder of the oncoming hooves.
But El Moro had already proven he was a know-it-all with a chip on his shoulder so, even as Longarm galloped closer, El Moro reined in to stand his ground, waving his hat and cussing a blue streak as half a ton of beef, bone, and horn tore through a clump of prickly pear at him with its head down and its tail up in that mankilling arch young bullfighters are warned to watch out for.
Being neither a bullfighter nor a rider who listened to anybody about anything, El Moro was still sitting there like a big-ass bird when that first steer plowed his roan right out from under him. The startled Mex landed face down on the steer's powerful rump, bounced off, and landed on his boot heels smack in front of yet more beef on the thundering hoof. Then Longarm grabbed him by the scruff of his leather bolero in passing at full gallop and tore on through the chaparral half a furlong before the fresh-mouthed but hard-riding young Mex was up behind him, riding postillion as he hung on to Longarm as if they were long lost lovers in squaw boots.
Longarm yelled, “Hang on! I got me some rope to throw!”
El Moro gasped, “Have you been smoking funny
cigarillos?
They've spilled! There's no stopping that much
carne
y hueso, once it gets to moving!”
Longarm didn't answer as he shook out a loop, smaller than he might have if he hadn't been saddled with a backseat rider who kept telling him to get them both the hell out of there!
Then he'd overtaken the mean brute that had gored El Morro's roan and roped it by its right horn from its right side to inspire its whirling more to the right in a clockwise attempt to gore the wall-eyed paint, this time.
But for all her bucking, the paint was still an old cowpony who'd been trained to keep the rope taught betwixt its saddlehorn and an object of any sort doing anything at the other end of said rope. So El Moro was screaming in sheer terror and Longarm was laughing like a loon as the two men rode one of the two beasts in a mad kerchief dance through mesquite and a whole lot of rising dust, as other beef circled in like soap bubbles swirling down the drain hole of a bath tub until, having no drain hole to swirl down, they just circled the central swirl in confusion.
“We're milling them!” EI Moro yelled in a happier tone as the big steer trying to gore the paint gave up to just hang there at the far end of the taut hemp, head down and tongue hanging way out as it pawed dust to prove it was still out to win, as soon as it figured this fool game out.
Longarm had no call to explain to a cowboy how stampeding cows were inclined to stampede clockwise. Longarm didn't know why most men were right handed, either. But he'd never seen cattle stampede the other way, counterclockwise, and once you had them milling in a circle, they were as good as standing in one place, save for all the weight they were out to lose on you as they panted and puffed with horns clashing.
By this time other D Bar L riders had circled in on all sides to bunch the mill tighter, and as the herd steadied down to a milling walk Longarm saw there was no handy way to get that steer off the other end of his rope from the saddle. So he told the Mex behind him, “I paid good money for that rope and that steer can't have it. Take these reins and scoot your crotch forward as I dismount, hear?”
El Moro gasped, “You can't be serious! Those brutes charge a man on foot on sight!”
Longarm allowed he'd have to teach 'em better manners. He threw his right leg across the horn in front of them to sit sidesaddle just long enough to hand the reins to El Moro. Then he only had to draw his left boot from the stirrup to drop lightly to the dust and go hand-over-hand along the rope as the steer on the far end eyed him wildly, trying to solve a problem it had never been offered before.
Then Longarm muttered, “Oh boy!” as he saw that tail going back up to arch just above its roots with the bushy end whipping back and forth like a cobra trying to line up on a swaying Hindu and his pesky flute. That long rack of horns went down. Longarm tried to decide which way he wanted to dodge as he remembered reading how no Spanish bullfighter would face this mongrel breed because you just never knew with a longhorn, bred for nothing better than stringy supper grub.
Then another shot rang out and the crazed critter simply dropped as if it had already made it to the sledge-man at the San Antone slaughter house.
Longarm glanced to his right to see Connie Deveruex demurely seated sidesaddle with a smoking Navy .36 in one dainty hand as she called out, “Get your rope and get back in your saddle, you silly! That brute cost me a good pony and Lord knows how much trail wastage. The one's left ought to be easier to manage, now. What was that noise that set them off like that? It sounded like a rifle shot.”
Longarm said, “It was, ma'am. Let me ride El Moro, here, back to his own saddle and I'll see what we can find out.”
He got his rope free and rode with the Mex to a roan pounded flat in a patch of trampled mesquite and cheat. He reined in and said, “Your saddle ain't busted up too bad, and your saddlebags should have gotten your possibles through.”
As the younger Tejano dropped off, he stared around to soberly declare, “Jesus,
Maria
y Jose! I think you just saved my life, gringo!” Longarm modestly replied, “I know I did. Don't call me gringo if you don't want me calling you greaser, El Moro.”
The Tejano smiled up at him boyishly to reply, “Is a deal.
Como se llama?”
Longarm allowed Dunk would do well enough and left the dismounted Tejano by his battered horse and saddle for the remuda riders, bringing up the rear behind the chuck wagon, to cope with at their own pace.
That mysterious rifle shot was the real question before the house.
Rejoining Connie Deveruex near the dead steer, he spied Slim Gonzales and two other D Bar L hands escorting an Anglo in bib overalls and a straw hat, mounted on a mule, in from the North. Gonzales was holding a twenty-gauge shotgun high in his free hand as he rode within earshot to call, “This one claims he was hunting quail, Miss Connie. If you'd care for my opinion he was after a free side of beef!”
The dusky blonde stared imperiously at the scared and neither too young nor too bright-looking Anglo as she declared, “Whatever you were hunting, you were hunting it on my land, Mister. Might you have the price of one good cow pony and one prime steer on you this morning?”
The scared old coot whined, “I never shot no pony! I never shot no steer! I pegged one shot at an infernal quail and I missed! Nobody told me I was on private land, ma'am. I just rode south from my government claim to see if I could put us some game meat on the table, and I never seen no posted property signs!”
Slim Gonzales said, “We've put 'em up plain every quarter mile and cleared a fence line we mean to string wire along one of these days. We know the damn yankee Federal Land Office has thrown open all that grazing land to you home-steading pests, north of the county line. Just like you were told, anything this side of it was the Deveruex-Lopez Land Grant.”
He turned to his boss lady and asked, “What do you want us to do with him, Miss Connie?”
She looked undecided and allowed she was open to suggestions. One of the Tejanos who'd rounded him up with Gonzales volunteered, “Why don't you take his mule, scattergun, and boots in partial payment and let us escort him off your property, Miss Connie?”
Another suggested, “Why escort him when we can rope and drag him? Being drug half that far would surely impress most nesters with the need to pay attention to property lines.”
She turned to Longarm to ask, “What do you think, Dunk?”
Longarm didn't think he ought to say he felt sorry for the poor old greenhorn, who likely needed that one mule he owned in this world.
So he said, “Only one way to deal with him, Miss Connie. Ain't none of this mesquite tall enough for his toes to clear the ground. But we ain't too far from them blackjack oaks to hang him right.”
It worked. It was Slim Gonzales who objected that solution might cause more trouble than the dead stock was worth. It was the hand who wanted to drag a man miles through chaparral who said flat out that he wasn't willing to take part in any murder.
As there came an uneasy murmur of agreement, Connie said, “I can see how things got out of hand up Lincoln County way if your old boss dealt with
trespassers
so ... permanently!”
Longarm shrugged and said, “You never heard me say I'd seen anybody hanging from a tree on Jingle Bob range, Miss Connie. I only answered your question as best I knew how. Nobody trespasses on the Jingle Bob. Some say that's because Uncle John's riders hang unwelcome riders from the nearest tree and others say such pests just vanish into thin air with their final fates unknown. I told you when you asked that I never killed a soul for anybody when I was drawing forty-and-found for working cows and working cows alone!”
She insisted, “You just now offered to kill this poor nester for me, didn't you?”
Longarm just shrugged and asked, “If you don't want us to hang him for you, what do you want us to do with him, Miss Connie?”
He liked her better when she snapped. “Oh, just get the
pendejo
out of my sight this time, and make certain he understands things won't go as easily on him the next time!”
Slim Gonzales told his two Mex followers, in Spanish, to escort the nester off the grant and just rough him up a little to make sure he understood exactly where the property lines might be.
Longarm pretended not to understand. As a sworn peace officer he'd have been honor-bound to step in if they'd really meant to adminster cruel and unusual punishment without a fair trial. But, seeing the old greenhorn could use a little help with his own disregard of common law, Longarm was sure Billy Vail would go along with a split lip or a black eye.