her hands in a tea towel. The short woman had lost most of her shine since the pudgy girl had married his brother a few years earlier as his second wife. Childbirth and having to oversee things with Susie had been a big chore for a town girl and banker’s daughter who’d lived a sheltered life up until her marriage.
“What’re you going to do?” May asked.
Everyone asked him that all the time. “Take two of the boys and go get them back.”
“Boys?”
“Reg and J.D. We’ll need to be ready to leave in twenty minutes. When they ride in, you wave them in to eat lunch.” He gave a head toss. They were a quarter mile behind him. “I’ll get a packhorse and then be back.”
“Why not get the sheriff?”
“They’ll be in Kansas, May, before I could even tell him.”
“Guess you’re right. I’ll get the boys fed and the food ready for the trip. Good thing we’ve got plenty of jerky.”
“Thanks.” He turned Blue toward the corrals and at the horse pen, dismounted to hitch him. He took a lariat off a post and shook it loose while walking to the gate. In the lot, the dozen horses threw up their heads from eating hay off the ground, and he picked out a stout black he knew would lead good. The bunch broke hard around the pen, and he raced on foot to head them off. Overhanded, he tossed the rope, and it settled over the black’s head. Chet sunk his boot heels in the dirt and put on the brakes when the noose jerked tight.
Snorting and acting the part of a walleyed fool, Black shied from Chet like he was ready to plunge off as Chet came up the rope hand over hand. “Whoa, stupid.”
He fashioned a halter and led the horse out. Dale Allen’s six- and eight-year-old sons by his first wife Nancy, who had died in birthing the youngest, a girl, Rachel, sat on the top rail, watching it all. They rushed over to walk beside him to the barn.
“He’s pretty spooky, ain’t he, Uncle Chet?” Ray asked, acting grown-up and making his younger brother Ty stay up with him so the horse didn’t step on him.
“He’s full of boogers,” Chet said.
“I got boogers, too,” Ty said.
Chet frowned at him, and the younger one put his finger up his nose and then showed him the results.
“You sure do.” Chet jerked hard on the lead to settle Black down, then tied him high in a ring on the wall and went into the tack room for the packsaddle and pads.
“What’s that smell in here?” Ty asked, sniffing the rich odors.
“Saddle soap and neat’s-foot oil.” Chet stepped around them with his arms full of a cross-buck saddle and pads. He put blankets on and talked the whole time to settle Black down. Then he looked around for the boys. “Stay there, fellas, he’s still kinda wild.”
“May says we’re wild.”
“Hush up, Ty. Uncle Chet don’t need to know all that.”
Chet paused and frowned at them. “Maybe I do. What’s she been telling you boys?”
“Nothing.”
Ty gave his older brother a two-handed shove. “She did, too.”
“Aw, she was just in one of them crying moods. She never meant it, she told us later.”
“Did so. Said she wished the Co-manches would get us—we was so wild.”
Ray shook his head in disgust over his younger brother’s disclosure. “May’s got them two babies and that’s lots. Paw said we got to be nicer to her.”
“I’m glad you’re trying to be nice to her,” Chet said, untying the lead rope.
“Yeah, we don’t want her to get like Grandma,” Ray said.
“Yes,” Chet said, a little heartsick at the words coming from an eight-year-old. “Let’s go to the house.”
“Can we ride him?”
“Boys, I’d love that but he’s still pretty high. Might throw you.”
“We understand. Maybe you can find us a pony we can ride.”
“You wasn’t supposed to ask him for that.” Ty put his hands to his mouth over his older brother’s transgression.
“We won’t tell on him and I’ll look for a good one.” Chet hitched the black at the rack with the other horses in front of the yard gate. “We better get washed up. Looks like they’re eating without us.”
“Okay. Uncle Chet,” Ty said, and they hurried for the washbasins on the porch.
He waited for them to wash up. Susie appeared in the doorway and set an armload of bedrolls on the stone floor. She clapped her hands together. “May’s about got the foodstuff in the panniers.”
“Thanks, hate to leave the place in so few hands—”
“We’ll make it. I hope you can get the horses back.”
He nodded. They had to.
After the meal, Chet first made a quick check of all they were taking along. Coffee, jerky, beans, salt pork, lard, flour, saleratus, sugar, raisins, and dried apples. A small Dutch oven, coffeepot, and skillet, plus big spoons, spatula, tin cups, plates, silverware, and a few towels. Matches, some candles—three extra shirts. And plenty of hemp rope. He and Reg carried the panniers out and hung them on the packsaddle. Dale Allen threw on the bedrolls, and then he put the canvas tarp over it all.
Susie brought out the three .44/40 Winchesters and two boxes of shells. J.D. put the rifles in the saddle scabbards on each horse and the cartridges in Chet’s saddlebags.
“Tell Louise when she gets back from Mason, the boys’ve gone with me and we’ll be back in a couple of days,” Chet said to Susie. “Keep watch. No telling what’ll happen next.”
“Don’t let them filthy savages get you boys,” Theresa screeched from the doorway, and clawed the air like a cat with her arthritis-deformed hands. “They all should have been drowned as pups. My Gawd, I’d’ve held each one of them under the water myself.”
“Now Mother, get hold of yourself.” Susie guided her back inside. “They ain’t going after Comanches, just rustlers.”
“They took Cagle—they took my twins—”
Rock sat in the cane rocker and nodded his head. “If I was ten years younger—”
In the saddle, Chet looked down at Dale Allen. “Hold her together. We’ll be back shortly.”
“Watch out for them boys.”
“I will—you go fishing with yours.”
“Why?” Dale Allen blinked at him in astonishment.
“They
