serious were you about her?” Reg asked.
“I asked her to marry me a couple of years later.”
“She turned you down?”
“Sure did.” Chet rubbed his calloused fingers over his whisker-bristled mouth. “I guess I was drinking a lot in them days and she was kinda upset about that, I reckon.”
“Then you decided to serenade her and win her back?” J.D. snickered out his nose.
“No that was a few years before that. Damn sure didn’t work anyway and that Messican he said, ‘Oh, mi amigo, it works every time.’”
“What did he say after you two got shot at?” Reg asked.
“Madre de Dios! That never happened before to me, hombre!”
At noontime, they reached a crossroads store, dropped out of the saddle, and tied the horses at the rack. Chet hitched up his canvas pants and led the way inside.
“Howdy, gents,” a man in his forties with a bushy mustache said from behind the counter. “What’s on your minds?”
“Food sure smells good in here,” Chet said, sniffing the rich aroma.
“My wife Alisha has some great stewed chicken and dumplings. Lunch is ten cents today.”
“We’ll take thirty cents worth.”
“I’ll tell her that she has customers.” He picked up the coins that Chet laid down and said, “My dear, three chicken dinners.”
“Coming, Russel, dear,” she said, as musically as he had. From the side room, she came with two dishes full of steaming chicken and homemade noodles. With her silver hair braided and piled on her head, she stood less than five feet tall. She handed them out and went back for more and a pan of fresh-made biscuits.
“Sure beats jerky,” J.D. said as if in disbelief. He dug into the food on his tin plate as he stood at the counter.
Reg grinned at the big biscuit in his hand. “My, my, this is living.”
“What brings you gents here?” the storekeeper asked.
“You seen anyone driving horses through here?” Chet asked.
“They went through here last night. Acted strange, bought some food and left—said they had to deliver their horses up in the Nation.”
J.D. pointed a fork at him. “One of them redheaded and lots of freckles?”
“Yes, what did they do?”
“Stole those horses from our ranch,” Chet said, and felt a knot in his throat. They finally knew for certain. He turned to his cousin. “I know, J.D. That sounds like Roy Reynolds. Sorry.”
J.D. shook his head. “He’s the one that’s gonna be sorry.”
“You know one of the rustlers?” the store man asked, looking shocked at them.
“All our lives,” Reg said with a wary look, and bit down on another biscuit.
The rich tasty food had drawn the saliva into Chet’s mouth, but somehow the realization that one of the rustlers was someone they knew made his tongue turn dry and the food become hard to swallow. This wasn’t going to be a nice trip—no way. Nothing he could do about it either.
After they finished the meal, they left the store and rode on. At dark, they made camp at a windmill. Tracks showed the cavy had been driven past there, too.
Chapter 3
“They was here last night,” the white-bearded man said to Chet and the boys, who were sitting on horseback. “Tried to sell me some of them horses. But I was wise to their game. Them horses in the herd had a bar-C brand on them. The horses they rode had 6Y and a lazy R on them. I knowed they wasn’t working for the man owned the herd.”
Chet nodded. “They stole those horses two days ago down on Yellow Hammer Crick.”
“I had ’em pegged then?”
“6Y, who’s is that?” Reg asked when they were back on the road and out of the old man’s hearing.
J.D. shook his head. “You know that one, Chet?”
He did, but he shrugged it off. Might just be a horse that Luther Hines had sold someone.
“How many days are they ahead of us?” J.D. asked, sounding weary.
“We must have cut it down to a day—or less,” Chet said.
“Let’s lope then,” J.D. said. “I want to get this over with—soon as we can.”
Late afternoon, they discovered a limping horse from their cavy. A stout dun that was favoring his right front foot and moved aside when they trotted up.
“That’s Sam Bass,” Reg said, recognizing the gelding.
Chet agreed and shook out a rope. He rode in and tossed the loop over the horse’s head, and made a wrap on the horn to shorten it up until he was beside the horse. J.D. pushed his mount in close and held Roan’s reins while Chet dismounted to inspect the damage to Bass’s foot. He lifted the hoof and cleaned it out with his jackknife. He pried a pea-size stone from the horse’s frog and then let it down.
“That ought to help you,” he said to the big cow pony, then clapped him on the neck and slipped the rope off him.
“What’ll we do with him?” J.D. asked.
“Horses go home,” Chet said, finished coiling the lariat and taking the reins back. “He should heal and be back at the home place in a week, if no one steals him again.”
“I never thought about it, but they do.”
“They do.” Chet mounted and they set off again.
“We’re getting closer,” Reg said. “Them horse apples are about steaming.”
“See that cloud bank?” Chet said, indicating the blue-black line that crossed the northwest sky. “It’s going to be a norther.”
“It’s only October,” Reg said.
“Never mind, it’s a-coming in and fast. I’ve been watching it all day,” Chet said.
“I’m getting cold just thinking about it. What are we going to do when it hits?”
“We may have to find someplace to den up.” He was disgusted not only about the threat of bad weather, but also about the time they’d lose as well.
“Any idea what they’ll do?” J.D. asked with a frown, and reined his horse around to look at Chet.
“No telling. Let’s push these ponies harder, maybe we can catch up.”
Both
