went for an iron and walked back to apply it. He glanced up to see someone coming. The firebrand was stamped on the calf’s right side and the bitter smoke from the singed hair filled Chet’s nose. He looked again at the rider driving in hard.
“It’s Susie,” Reg said, standing beside him. “Wonder what in the hell’s wrong now.”
“Rustlers!” she said, out of breath, and skidded the lathered bay to a sliding stop on his hind legs.
Chet ran over to his twenty-year-old sister. “Rustling what?”
“They took all the horses in the north pasture and headed out with them.”
“In broad daylight?” Chet asked her in disbelief. What fools would do that?
“Yes, two hours ago. I had to wait for May to get back to watch the children. You know Mother can’t do that.”
He gave her a grave nod. His mother, Theresa, hadn’t been right in her mind since the Comanch’ took little Cagle. Then when those reds got the twins, Phillip and Josephine, she’d lost it all.
“Who was it?” he asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I think one of them was a Reynolds—I recognized his paint horse.”
“What in the hell’s going on?” Dale Allen asked, coming over on his stout roping horse from where he had been working on his saddle over at the side.
“Rustlers took our cavy out of the north pasture a couple of hours ago,” Chet said. “You boys put out that fire. Reg, you go get Pa and Heck up here. Branding’s over for today.”
“Is May back?” Dale Allen asked about his wife as he sat on his fretting horse that circled around under him.
Susie nodded. “I had to wait for her to get back to watch Ma and the kids.”
“They’ve got a big head start,” Chet said. “But they can’t race that many horses.”
“They can sure scatter them from hell to breakfast.” Dale Allen shook his head in disgust.
“Aw, they must be nuts,” Chet said, the consuming anger firing his veins. “They sure as hell know we’ll run them down.”
“We won’t standing here.”
Chet heard his impatient brother’s comment and tried to ignore it. When he could see Reg and two others riding up from the cowherd, he went for his mount. “Paw’s coming with Heck. You tell them what’s happened.”
Damn, what next? About the time the Comanche had been run off that part of Texas, white rustlers had taken their place. There were close to sixty broke horses in that pasture, and Chet intended to use them on their cattle drive in the spring. No small investment, and one he could ill afford to lose—he had every intention of sending Dale Allen as the ramrod on this year’s push north. Chet had been up there several times, and possessed no big urge to sit on a horse that long again. Besides, it was his brother’s turn. Chet needed to gather up another herd for the following year—something he was better at than anyone else in the family. Most of it involved dealing with Messikins on the border. Any more the cattle available for them to drive north besides their own had to be bought up from deep in Mexico—those were the last remaining ones aside from them from the small outfits’ assignments.
He tightened the cinch on his blue roan and threw a leg over, reining him back to the others. Even in the distance he could see how red Pa’s face was over the news of the theft. The old man hated rustlers—red or white.
Waving his finger at all of them, the old man shouted, “I want them sons a bitches hung by the neck till they’re dead.”
“We’ll catch ’em, Pa. We’re headed for the house to get some grub, bedrolls, and rifles. They won’t get away.”
“Well, by Gawd, they’ve got a good head start—”
“Easy, you’ll have your ticker all upset,” Chet said, concerned about the old man’s anger flaring up his heart again.
Pa spit to the side and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “If I was ten years younger, I’d go after them by myself.”
Chet nodded. From his boyhood, he recalled how the old man and a posse went to look for the abducted Cagle. When they returned empty-handed, Pa was never the same. But it was his last desperate trip five years later, looking for the twins as he pursued the Comanche, that hurt his heart so deeply. He hadn’t been heard from for three months. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink for days. He’d returned broken down and demented from his relentless pursuit and coming up empty-handed. For months on end afterward, he never said a word, simply sat on the front porch in a rocker and stared off at nothing.
That year, Chet turned eighteen and began running the ranch, and had ever since. His brother, Dale Allen, younger by a year, would always stand back and let him do it all, too. Then Dale Allen would complain if it wasn’t just right. The thing Chet regretted the most was that he’d never had time to be a boy—to ride off and see some new country, raise some hell, stake out a place of his own, his own brand, his own house, and even find a woman of his own like his brother had.
“Susie, you take Reg’s fresh horse and he can ride that hot one back. Go home and get some food ready for us to take along and we’ll be coming.”
“How much?” she asked, stepping down and exchanging reins with the lanky boy.
“Oh, enough for a couple of weeks.”
“I’ll get the bedrolls out.” She looked at him with the question of how many as she slipped into the saddle and pushed down her dress to cover her exposed knees.
“Three. Reg and J.D. are going along.”
“But they’re boys.” Dale Allen frowned in disapproval.
“I need you here to run things.” Chet knew he sounded sharp, but sometimes his brother needed the truth spelled out. “Pa can’t go and your oldest boy’s too young. We’ll find them and deal out the justice that’s needed.”
“What’ll Aunt Louise say about you taking them two after rustlers?”
“Maw’ll say good riddance.” Freckle-faced Reg grinned big at him.
“Like hell—you better think about this, Chet Byrnes,” Dale Allen shouted after him.
Chet was already trotting his horse and a hundred feet ahead of the rest. He had thought it over and that was his answer. Dale Allen didn’t like it, he could go stick his head in a pail of water. Chet ran the ranch. He jabbed spurs to the blue roan. Already out of sight, Susie was heading for the ranch house.
There was lots to do.
Chapter 2
The two-story limestone house that Rock Byrnes first erected had grown into a fortress over the years. The huge wooden front gates had not been closed in a decade. A twelve-foot-high wall encircled the headquarters and inside the compound, the once-small two-story structure had festered into several connected residences, a bunkhouse, multiple corrals, pens, barns, a blacksmith shop, and a grain storage building.
