you all,” Chet said, and the three of them, leading the packhorse, rode out of the compound for the north pasture in a long trot.
“You ever go after rustlers before?” Reg asked Chet when they were beyond anyone hearing him.
“Several times.”
“You always get them?”
“Most.”
“Guess you hung them?”
Chet looked hard at the far ridge. “Yes, we hung ’em.”
“If it’s the Reynolds bunch, what’ll you do?” J.D. asked, pushing his horse in closer.
“A horse thief is a horse thief.”
“Even, like, if you know them?”
“Even then.”
“Gosh, I hope Susie was wrong…”
“Maybe she was, J.D., maybe she was.”
Over a fourth of the cavy was shod, so it wasn’t hard to pick out their tracks from where rustlers drove them out the wire-and-stake woven gate and headed ’em northwest. Chet pointed at the hoof marks, and they short-loped for a ways down the dim road.
Late afternoon, Chet spotted some smoke, and led the way off the trail to a place up in a canyon. A white man in his underwear top and pants came out of the jacal. He looked them over, then combed his too long hair back with his fingers and gave it a toss back.
“Gents, can I help you?”
“J.D., you look over them horses in the pen,” Chet said, and reined up the roan. “Evening, mister, we’re tracking some rustlers.”
“I sure ain’t one.” He made a frown like it was all a mistake.
Chet nodded, and looked for J.D. as the youth studied the stock. When the boy shook his head and started to ride back, Chet nodded again to the man. “Much obliged. Sorry to bother you.”
“How many did they get?”
“Over sixty head. Any of them with the bar-C brand on them will bring a reward my brother will pay if I ain’t back. I figure they’ll lose a few in their haste.”
“Thanks, I’ll be watching for ’em.”
“Sure,” Chet said, and turned Roan to leave. The boys leading Black joined him, and when they reached the road, Reg looked back. At last, he turned forward and frowned at Chet. “What’s he do for a living?”
“Eats our beef and lays up with that Mexican woman.”
Reg turned up his lip in disbelief. “You figure so?”
“Yes, and some day I’ll catch him red-handed at it.”
“Be kinda easy to live like that. I sorta wish I could live like he does.” Reg snickered. “I’d sure like to try that for a spell.”
“What’s that? Steal beef or rut with some old Mexican gal?” Chet grinned.
Red-faced, Reg pounded his saddle horn with his fist. “The latter, I guess.”
J.D. shook his head as if disgusted. “I ain’t having no part of either.”
“We better lope a ways,” Chet said, suppressing his smile and setting his spurs to Roan.
At sundown, they found a tank and set up camp. Horses hobbled, they made coffee and gnawed on May’s jerky. Too late to cook much, and they were tired. Chet fell asleep to a coyote’s yapping while wondering how far ahead the rustlers were that night.
Before dawn, he shook the boys awake in the morning’s cool air. Leftover coffee was reheated and some more peppery jerky was gnawed on. They saddled, packed, and rode off when the gray light touched the eastern horizon.
“Sure is cold,” J.D. complained, rubbing his arms. “I must have missed fall this year.”
“I guess,” Chet said, wishing for some rain on his winter oats. They were up, but wouldn’t grow much without more moisture. He’d planted close to eighty acres in the creek bottoms. Large acreage and an expensive outlay. But he’d needed the feed for horses and the milk stock. They’d farmed that much corn the past summer and made a good crop. Some of the crop made forty bushels of ear corn to the acre. His heart wasn’t into dirt farming, but he needed the output for the rest of his operation. Still, he recalled plowing with a fifteen-inch Oliver hand plow and hitting root snags that jerked the wooden handles out of a thirteen-year-old’s hands.
These days, they used hired help, five mules, and a riding sulky plow that could really lay the ground over. Did more work than four hands with walking plows could in a day and lots easier. Still, farming was not his favorite game. But he and Pa planted many crops, broke many teams, and until his Comanche episode, no one could stack hay faster than the old man. Real sad how both of his parents had become so done in by the twins’ abduction. But even death was better than that—with death you knew they were planted and nothing else you could do. But them red devils stealing those babies and never to know what became of them was a thing that had ruined his parents’ minds and lives.
“Them horse apples we’re seeing look fresher today.” Reg broke into Chet’s thoughts as the boy rode along and leaned over in the saddle to study the manure.
“I don’t think they stopped last night—kept going.” Chet stood in the stirrups, looking for signs of their dust on the northern horizon.
“You thinking that they ain’t got a batching outfit?” J.D. asked.
Chet nodded. “It may have been a lark they went on.”
“A lark?” Reg screwed up his face.
“I’ve done some dumb things being a little liquored up.”
“You never stole no horses.”
“No. but dumbest thing I ever did, I sang a song to a girl one time.”
“You did what?” J.D. was about to bust into laughing.
“Aw, I had a crush on Kathren Combs before she married Luther Hines.” Chet shook his head while looking hard at the long mesa ahead of them in the north—no sign of dust. “Well, one night, I got liquored up and took this Mexican fiddler along with me to play. Boy, was he drunk, and in the dark we went down to her folks’ place, and I sang some ballad in Spanish outside the house.”
“Were you any good?” Reg asked.
“Her father thought we were alley cats and shot at us with a shotgun. My, my, that damn Mexican sure outrun me.”
“He hit you with the shot?”
“No, he was laughing too hard.”
“I sure hope I have some adventures when I grow up,” J.D. said.
“How old are you, fifteen?”
