The sun grated across the hard-packed dirt, so low in the sky that even the pebbles threw shadows. The day was nearly done, the earth baked by the merciless summer, the soil so dry that even the footsteps of the men in the corral put up plumes of chalky dust.
Gage Larson sat down in the first shade he’d seen all day, sweated through his shirt and pants. Even his chaps were dark from the sweat, heavy and hot against his legs. He leaned back in the old chair, felt the aches in his body beg him for some other kind of work.
He heard the steps on the plank flooring outside his shed, the one luxury afforded the foreman of this outfit. He looked up and saw Swede, the only other blonde-headed man on the ranch.
“Fella here to see the boss,” he said. “Fella says he’s looking to sign on for the drive.” Swede laughed as he said it.
Gage wasn’t going to beg him to tell what was so damn funny, he was tired and wanted a drink and to sleep. The branding had taken it out of him, and tomorrow, too early tomorrow, they would push the herd south to Lockhart to auction.
He took a deep breath and leaned forward, elbows on the table he used for his desk. He needed a few more for the crew, no one wanted to ride drag in this bunch. Low man would be useful for the dirty work.
“Tell him to put his horse in the paddock and we’ll sort the rest out in the morning.”
Swede hid his smile with his hand. “That’s the thing, Boss. Fella ain’t gotta horse.”
Gage stepped through the door into the fading light and looked at the corral, where the man stood. The sun was behind him so he couldn’t see his face, but Gage felt something right away, a strange impression he didn’t like. He drew a breath and spoke from the porch.
“I hear tell you are looking to sign on for the drive. Doesn’t appear you are equipped for the task,” he said, loud enough to carry across the yard. The man was still, not leaning against the corral fence, just standing in the yard, his hands loose at his sides. No bag, no saddle, no gear.
The man walked across the lot toward the shed, up close Gage could see he was younger than he thought. He wore a tattered hat with a small brim, loose gabardine pants cut short above deer hide moccasins.
The man stopped ten feet from Gage and looked up at him. “My name is Montez. I have worked on many drives. I can work for you,” he said.
Gage glanced out toward beyond the barn, where the scrub was the only feature in the dun-colored prairie. Men were coming into the lot now, a few at a time, slowing to see who Gage was talking to, lingering within earshot. They stirred up the dust in a low cloud between them.
“Look, we can’t supply every pie-eater that walks onto the lot,” Gage said. He reached up and set his hat back on his head, feeling the air get at the sweat on his scalp. “You can’t ride herd without a mount.”
The man took off his hat and Gage saw his eyes, dark brown, intense. He was not one to notice such things, but as the man looked at him, the unsettled feeling grew stronger.
“Mister, I can work for you. I don’t ask that you give me a horse or a saddle. I can do the work. I can do it well.”
Gage didn’t hear any accent, but the man was dark, maybe Mexican, maybe Comanche. Or mix. Didn’t matter.
“Young fella, I’m done explaining, now you are wasting my time.” Gage felt the day creep up on him, sanding off the last of his patience.
“You give me a chance to show you, if you would, and then if you say yes, I work the first day for free.” Montez said this plainly, not begging, just as natural as describing the weather.
Gage felt things shift in him, and now he wanted done with this. He was hungry and tired, and he could feel the men watching him, seeing how he was going to deal with this stranger. He pointed at the rider closest to him. “Stacks. Get this man off my lot.” He turned his back on them all and walked back inside.
Montez heard the door of the shed close, but he was not watching, his eyes were on the man called Stacks, who was already uncoiling his rope. He could feel the horses of the men behind him, closing in around him, feel their weight on the earth around him.
As the lariat unfurled Montez slipped between the horses next to him, feeling the hands of the riders grasp at his tunic, moving faster than the animals could react. He ran across the lot, dodging between the horses of other wranglers coming in from the herd. He opened his stride and ran for the open space, feeling the horses now running behind him.
He ran into the prairie, seeing where he would hide if he could stay ahead of the horses, but already feeling them, feeling the breath and the hooves, the men riding grunting and gasping, urging the horses faster. And then without looking back, knowing the lariat was in the air, and moving to one side, to slip away, and feeling it close around his shoulders and tighten.
***
“What do we do with him?” Stacks asked out loud, looking down at the crumpled figure of the man in the dirt at his horse’s feet.
“Boss said get him off the lot, we done that, I reckon,” one of the others said. It was near dark now and Stacks couldn’t see who was still with him, just silhouettes of men on horseback. They had dragged the man for a while, seemed to have taken the fight out of him. They were far enough from the lot they couldn’t see the lamps or the fires.
Stacks leaned on his saddle horn and stepped down, loosened his rope, and then gathered it in loops in his hands. He looked down, saw the man moving, still covering his head with his arms. “Nothin’ personal,” he said softly.
Montez listened as the men rode off. He sat up slowly, feeling the aches in his body, sensing what was hurt. Nothing broken. He breathed in deeply and didn’t feel any pain, then moved onto his knees and sat up straight. He wiped the dirt and blood from his face and sat looking in the direction of the riders, slowly riding in the dim light back toward the corral.
***
Gage was not sure if he was asleep or awake, but someone, maybe in his dream, was shaking his shoulder, yelling at him. He swung his arm, felt the shaking stop, and sat up in his bunk.
“Boss, wake up!” said the voice.
“Whatthehell …” he began, trying to make out who was standing over him. He shook his head trying to clear the webs of sleep, the last of the whiskey fumes from the night before.
“Boss, you gotta come,” the voice again, now he could make out it was Swede. “You better get your boots on. All our horses is gone.”
“What are you saying? What horses?”
Swede was hollering at him, and in the small room, Gage felt the sound like a blow. “The horses, all of ‘em is gone. Except what boys watching the herd, ain’t none of us got mounts.”
It took ten minutes for Gage to make his way to the paddock. It was barely light now, but he could make out the wranglers milling around the crude fence that held the remuda. The gate was closed, and inside was nothing but dirt and horse clods.
“Dammitall,” he yelled, throwing his hat down on the dirt. “Who was on watch? You telling me somehow twenty horses wandered off and not one of you fleabags heard anything?”
“Boss,” said a voice in the dark, “ain’t none of ‘em wandered off. The gate was closed when we got here. Somebody took ‘em.”
He heard Swede remind him they never had need for a night watch when they were in the lot, so wasn’t anyone to blame. The other men muttered agreement, their pride punctured.
Gage thought for a moment, not knowing where to begin. None of these pokes were any good at tracking but how hard will it be to follow the trail of twenty horses? He turned to Swede.
“Get me those men from the herd, bring me those nags. I want three men with me, and bring guns. Soon as we can see we are going to find those horses and get them back.” He picked up his hat and started stomping back to his shed. “The rest of you keep an eye on the herd. And somebody bring me some goddam coffee.”
***
They spotted the horses on a rise, huddled around a tree, easy to see on the horizon. They had no trouble finding the signs and hadn’t ridden an hour before Stacks shouted and pointed off to the south, where the horses stood.
“Not exactly hiding them,” Gage muttered. The four men trotted toward the horses, pistols drawn, expecting to see some resistance from whoever took them. As they got close enough, they saw the horses were hobbled to one another with rope, linked around the big tree, grazing in the short grass there.
Stacks said: “That’s my rope, I’m bettin’. Wasn’t with my saddle this morning when I went in the barn.”
Gage growled to himself. The unsettled feeling was back again, and now it solidified what his first suspicion was. That young buck that they dragged out off the lot, somehow he was behind this. Gage couldn’t imagine how one man did it, so maybe there were others with him.
“I sure hate to see that rope cut up so,” Stack said, “It was a good one.”
“Stacks, shut your mouth, I’ve heard enough from you,” Gage snapped at him. “Get these animals together and get them back to the lot. We still could get on the trail in the morning.”
When they rode up to the corral there were two of his men standing at the edge of the lot waiting. Gage pulled his reins right in front of them and looked down. “What is it?” he asked.
One of the men, Langtree, spoke up: “That young fella you ran off yesterday? He was here, said he wanted to give you a message.”
Gage felt his stomach churn. “What? He was here? Why didn’t you keep him? Jeezus, boys this is a horse thief you let go.”
“Wasn’t like it was up to us, Boss. He was here, just appeared next to the barn, and said his piece, and then he was gone,” said Langtree, shaking his head. “We didn’t know you wanted him. Plus we didn’t have mounts, and he’s faster than a jackrabbit, we sure wasn’t gonna run him down.”
Gage pounded his fist on the saddle horn. “What did he say? What was the message?” he snarled at the men.
Langtree hesitated for a moment, not wanting to be involved in this now. He swallowed hard and squinted up at Gage. “Fella said to tell you that he can work for you. He said he don’t need no horse.”
Gage stomped into his shed, and threw his hat on the table, blew out a breath. He had to have these animals to Lockhart next month or the landowners would be looking for a new foreman. He was not going to let this mustang get in his way. He no sooner formed this thought than he heard another voice hollering his name out in the yard.
He went out and stepped into the dirt, saw a few of the men walking fast toward him. None of the wranglers walked when they could ride, so it was painful to watch them bowlegged and clumsy trying to hurry across the lot.
“Boss,” one of them hollered, “we gotta have horses to keep up with this job.”
Gage looked south and pointed. “Yonder comes the remuda, boys, you’ll be back in the saddle presently.”
“Wellsir, better late than never,” said the cowboy. “Seein’ that somebody cut about fifty head out of the herd and sent them running north from the rest.”
Gage felt off balance for a moment. “What!?” he screamed. “Somebody? What are you saying? Who cut the herd?”
The cowboy took off his hat and wiped his head with the sleeve of his shirt. “Fella you run off yesterday, one who Stacks dragged. I’m gonna tell you, Boss, I never saw a body run like this. That man was right in the middle of the beeves, like watching a gazelle drive ‘em. It was something to see.”
Gage took two long strides and in the last step swung his fist at the man and hit him square in the mouth, hard enough to knock him back into the dirt. “Sonofabitch. He was ‘something to see’? If you could see him, why didn’t you shoot him? He was stealing our cattle!”
The man sputtered blood, still flat on his back. He wiped his mouth and raised up on his elbows. “Dammit Boss. My rifle is all I own that I coulda hit him with, and that’s in the boot with my saddle. Still in the barn. Is why I didn’t shoot him.”
Gage leaned down and gave the man his hand and pulled him up out of the dirt. Before either could say another word, the men with the horses came up, and they all rushed to open the gate and wave the horses into the paddock.
Gage told Stacks to stay in the saddle and get half a dozen men on horseback. “We lost fifty head, heading somewhere north. You get them back. Make sure everyone is carrying a rifle and a pistol.”
Stacks moaned a little. “This is one helluva outfit.”
Gage shook a fist at him and then turned and stomped to the shed. He pulled on his gunbelt, cursing.
A few hours later the men came back with the missing cattle. They had no trouble tracking them, spotted them peacefully grazing several miles north. No sign of the thief. Gage set a picket around the herd and posted three men at the paddock. Every man was armed, and he stood in front of each one of them and told them what would happen if they fell asleep on their watch.
Gage was in the saddle until long after dark, weaving between the lot and around the perimeter of the herd, searching for any sign of the man, making sure his crew was keeping watch. Satisfied with all he could do, he rode back to the lot and hauled the saddle off his horse, and walked back to his shed.
He put his hat on the table and unhooked his gun belt and slung it over the iron bedframe, and then sat back in his chair and heaved a sigh. The day had felt like ten days. He reached down to where he kept his bottle and held it up to the light and then uncorked it and poured a shot. He felt the warmth of the whiskey, blew out a breath and leaned back in his chair, propped his feet on the table.
He woke with a start, shocked to realize he’d fallen asleep. He dropped his feet from the table and put his hands up to rub his eyes. When he lowered his hands, he was looking at the dark young man, Montez. Holding his pistol.
“I mean you no harm, Boss,” he said. “I just want you to know where your gun is.”
Gage sat up straight. His heart was hammering now, and the tight feeling in his stomach was back. He looked at Montez, without his hat now, his fierce brown eyes glinting in the lamplight. He held the Colt revolver pointed up, but the hammer was cocked.
“I am sorry we got off to a bad start,” Montez said, a little smile coming to him. “I promise that things will go better now. If you want.”
Gage took a breath, trying to understand. “What is it you want?” he finally asked. “What are you doing here?” He rubbed his hands over his eyes again, trying to make clear what was happening.
“I can work for you, Boss.” Montez leaned forward slightly, looking at Gage to keep his attention. “I don’t need your horse or your tack or the guns. I can ride herd with your outfit, and I will do anything that those boys,” Montez pointed the Colt toward the door, “can do for you with this herd.”
Gage waited for a moment, his heart slowing, understanding now that he may not be shot in his chair. He looked at the man across from him, seeing now he was not as young as he thought. The face was lined, and there were scars, but it was the eyes that told all the rest.
“How can I hire you on,” Gage said, “how can I have you working with the outfit after all this?” he waved his arms, trying to capture all of what had happened. “How can I trust you?”
Montez smiled, a full smile, his white teeth stark against his dark skin. “Would you rather have me here, where you can see me,” he said, “or out there, where you will wonder what I am going to do next?”
The End
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