Bleeding Texas (14 page)

With a curse, he turned away from the door. His father caught at his arm and said, “What are you going to do?”

“I'm gonna go find her, of course,” Nick said.

He questioned every man on the ranch. None of them would admit to having seen Samantha since the previous day, and Nick figured they were all too afraid of him to lie. He sent the hands to look for her, ordering them to spread out all over Rafter F range.

The best tracker on the ranch was a middle-aged Mexican named Gomez. Nick thought he was part-Indian, which would account for his skill at following a trail. Gomez found some tracks he thought might belong to Samantha's horses. He and Nick followed them to Bear Creek.

Nick reined to a halt on the bank and stared across the stream at the Star C range. Why in blazes would Samantha go over there? He couldn't come up with a good reason.

For that matter, it was impossible to be sure that the tracks he and Gomez had followed actually were those of Samantha's horses.

Gomez nodded toward the Creel ranch and asked, “You want me to go over there and take a look around, boss?”

Nick pondered the question while mentally cursing his sister. Whatever Samantha was trying to pull, why had she had to go and do it right now? Nick had too much on his plate to worry about this. And if Gomez crossed the creek and ran into any of the Creel punchers and got into a fight with them, it would just stir up trouble that Nick didn't need.

“No,” he said. “We'll go back and see if any of the others find her.”

Gomez nodded, as stolid as ever. He and Nick turned their horses away from the creek.

When Samantha came back—and Nick was sure that she would, sooner or later—she needed to have a strap taken to her, he thought. There was a time when their father would have done exactly that.

These days, Nick wasn't sure that Ned Fontaine cared enough to do such a thing. If that turned out to be the case, then he'd have to take care of it himself, he mused.

He was the head of this family now, and by God, the sooner the others understood and accepted that, the better!

Bo, Scratch, and the others pushed the herd across the Guadalupe River without incident the next morning after the near-disastrous encounter with the farmers. They continued southwest the rest of the day without running into any more trouble.

As they got ready to make camp late that afternoon at a spot Alonzo Hammersmith had selected, Lauralee rode up to Bo. She was covered from head to toe with a thick layer of grayish-brown dust and looked miserable.

“I hope you're satisfied with yourself,” she said. “You told me to ride drag just so I'd get filthy, didn't you?”

“That never crossed my mind,” Bo said, which was stretching the truth a mite. “It's just a job that has to be done. Somebody's got to push those stragglers back to the herd.”

“You didn't give me the dirtiest job there is so I'd change my mind and go back to Bear Creek?”

“Nope.”

As a matter of fact, he had thought that she would be less appealing with trail dust all over her, and therefore it would be easier for him to resist the temptation she represented.

Turned out the idea wasn't totally successful. Even filthy, Lauralee Parker was a beautiful woman. No amount of trail dust could hide that completely.

She took off her hat, revealing a distinct line across her forehead above which the dust hadn't settled.

“I look ridiculous,” she said.

“Not really,” Bo said, and this time he was telling the truth.

“You stuck me back there with a bunch of teenage boys.”

Bo shrugged and said, “The less experienced hands usually ride drag. That's just the way it is on a cattle drive.”

Lauralee clapped her hat back on and muttered, “All right, all right, I'll quit bellyaching. I don't want to prove your point for you.”

“What point is that?”

“That I shouldn't be on this drive in the first place.”

With that, she hauled her horse around and rode off toward the herd, which some of the hands were gathering in a big meadow between stands of cottonwoods.

Scratch rode up beside Bo and said with a smile, “Stubborn gal, ain't she?”

“In more ways than one,” Bo agreed.

The next day they crossed Coleto Creek, again without incident. It was not far from here, Bo reflected, where James Fannin and a force of Texas volunteers had engaged the Mexican army in battle during the revolution. Facing overwhelming odds—and plagued by Fannin's own indecisiveness, to be honest, Bo recalled from those days—the Texans had been defeated and the survivors taken prisoner and marched into the town of Goliad.

It was near there where those prisoners had been herded together and massacred by their Mexican captors, with only a few escaping to carry word of the bloody atrocity.

That massacre had come back to haunt the Mexicans a few weeks later when the Texan army under Sam Houston charged across a grassy field near the San Jacinto River screaming the battle cry, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!”

Bo Creel and Scratch Morton had been among them.

The Texans had carried the day and won their independence. And a lifelong bond of friendship had been forged.

Scratch rode up beside Bo as he sat watching the cattle cross the creek.

“Rememberin' back to the Runaway Scrape days?” Scratch asked.

“Yeah, and San Jacinto.”

“A mighty long time ago.”

“In some ways it seems like yesterday,” Bo said. “But it wasn't. Texas has changed a lot since then.”

“So have we,” Scratch said. “My knees and my back tell me about it every mornin' when I crawl out of my bedroll and stand up.”

It would take several days now for the herd to reach the San Antonio River. That would be the last major ford the cattle would have to make, although there would be a number of little streams to be crossed as they came closer to the coast. There was a bay northeast of Rockport they would have to circle, too, before they reached the seacoast settlement.

The next two days were uneventful. Cattle drives were a little like war, Bo thought—long stretches of utter tedium, punctuated by occasional outbursts of heart-stopping danger.

He hoped the stampede they'd had to cope with back on the other side of the Guadalupe was going to be the only instance of the latter on this drive.

In camp that night, Bo sat down next to his nephew Lee, one of Cooper's boys, who was perched on a log near the fire. Lee had proven to be a good solid hand, one of the best in the bunch, in fact. The young man wore a pensive look on his face tonight, though.

Bo took a sip of the coffee in the tin cup he held and asked, “Something bothering you, Lee?”

“No, not really, Uncle Bo. Just, uh . . . missin' somebody, I guess you'd say.”

Bo grinned and thumbed his hat back.

“That somebody being a girl, I reckon,” he said.

“Yes, sir. A mighty special girl.”

“Been courting her for a while, have you?”

Lee hesitated, then said, “In a manner of speakin', I guess.”

“Are you thinking you might marry her?”

A bit of a grim cast came over Lee's face in the firelight as he said, “I'd like nothin' better . . . but I don't know if it'll ever happen.”

“Why not?”

“Well . . . her pa . . . Ah, there ain't no use talkin' about it.”

Bo nodded sagely and said, “Yeah, if the girl's pa doesn't like you, that can make it harder. But it doesn't mean it'll never happen.”

“You think so?” Lee looked and sounded like he didn't want to let himself hope as he asked that question.

“Sure. If a couple of people want to be together bad enough, they'll find a way to make it happen. You just keep that in mind, son.”

“Thanks, Uncle Bo. I will.” Lee tossed the dregs of his coffee in the fire and stood up. “My turn to ride nighthawk, so I reckon I better get at it. 'Night.”

“Good night,” Bo said.

Lee walked off to saddle a horse. Bo sat there sipping his coffee for a couple of minutes before Lauralee came up and sat down on the log beside him. She wasn't quite as filthy tonight because Bo had taken pity on her and moved her from drag to one of the flanks.

“I heard what you told Lee,” Lauralee said. “About two people finding a way to get together if they want to bad enough. You really believe that, Bo?”

Well, he had set a nice little trap for himself, he thought. But he wasn't going to lie this time, so he said, “Yes, I do.”

“No matter what the obstacles between them, eh?”

“That's right.” He paused. “But both of them have to want it, not just one.”

“You'll never make me believe you don't want me, Bo Creel. You're just too damn stubborn to admit it.”

Bo looked down into his coffee cup and muttered, “I reckon I'm not the only one around here who's stubborn.”

Lauralee laughed and leaned closer to him. Lowering her voice so that only he could hear her, she asked, “You know what I'm going to do when we get to the San Antonio River, Bo?”

He figured she would tell him whether he answered or not, so he didn't say anything.

“I'm going to take a bath,” she went on, so close to him now he felt the warmth of her breath against his ear. “I'm going to find me a nice swimming hole and take off all my clothes and climb in. I'm going to scrub all this trail dust off every inch of my skin. Every single . . . little . . . inch of me.”

Lord, have mercy, Bo thought.

It wasn't really a prayer, but even if it had been, the Almighty would have picked a pretty odd way to answer it.

Because the next instant, gunshots roared from the direction of the herd's bedground, and their echoes rolled like thunder across the prairie.

Bo and Lauralee leaped up from the log as the gunfire continued. Confused, angry shouts rang out. The men here in camp raced for their horses.

“Stay here!” Bo told Lauralee. “Must be rustlers hitting the herd.”

“The hell with that!” she responded. “I can shoot!”

Alonzo Hammersmith came around the end of the chuck wagon holding the big wooden spoon he'd been using to stir a pot of mulligan stew. Bo grabbed Lauralee's arm and practically threw her at Hammersmith. The grizzled old cook had no choice but to catch hold of her.

“Hang on to her, Alonzo!” Bo shouted as he ran toward his still-saddled horse. “Whatever you do, don't let her go!”

Lauralee screeched angrily as she tried to writhe out of Hammersmith's grip. The cook's arms were heavily muscled from wrestling around barrels of flour and sugar and salt, though, so she couldn't pull free.

Scratch came running up as Bo swung into the saddle.

“Rustlers?” the silver-haired Texan asked as he hit the leather right after Bo.

“Must be,” Bo replied.

He lifted his reins, kicked his horse into a run, and headed for the herd. Scratch was right beside him.

Up ahead, Colt flame bloomed redly in the darkness, deadly crimson flowers that split the night for an instant and then disappeared.

There was no way to tell who was doing the shooting around the herd. Swift hoofbeats and furious yells competed with the booming gunshots and added to the confusion.

Bo headed in the direction he had seen his nephew Lee ride off a short time earlier. He shouted, “Lee! Lee Creel!”

“Over here, Uncle Bo!”

Gunfire almost drowned out Lee's response, but Bo heard it and veered his horse toward his nephew. He spotted a large dark shape on the ground and realized a second later that it was the body of a horse.

Flame spouted from the muzzle of a gun as someone fired over the top of the dead animal. That had to be Lee, thought Bo. The young man's horse had been shot out from under him, but he was using it for cover as he fought back against the attackers.

Bo and Scratch galloped toward him. So Lee wouldn't think he was being jumped from behind and start shooting at them, Bo called, “Hang on, son!”

Riders charged out of the shadows, their guns blaring as they threw lead at Lee. Bo opened fire from horseback and Scratch did likewise. Both men knew the back of a running horse was no place for accuracy, but they wanted to take some of the heat off Lee.

Besides, a shot that found its target through blind luck could be just as deadly as one that was aimed.

The diversion worked—in a manner of speaking. Several riders peeled off from the group of attackers and came at Bo and Scratch with their guns blasting. Bo felt the hot breath of a slug passing close to his cheek and knew that blind luck could work both ways.

With the instincts they had developed over years of fighting side by side, Bo and Scratch split up, Bo going left and Scratch angling right. The maneuver was well-timed. The men who had charged them wound up going between them, unable to stop in time.

Lead from the Texans' guns raked through the raiders in a lethal crossfire. Now the range was close enough for a degree of accuracy, even in bad light, especially when the men doing the shooting were experienced gun-handlers.

A couple of men tumbled out of their saddles. The others wheeled around, though, and returned slug for slug. The air around Bo buzzed with bullets like a swarm of angry hornets was after him.

The sharp cracks of a rifle began to sound. Bo looked around and saw that Lee had gotten his Winchester in action. The young man was up on one knee now, firing as fast as he could work the rifle's lever.

Bo heard something else over the chaos around him. It was a rumble like the sound of distant drums, accompanied by a hellish clacking as if Satan's imps were playing castinets. The rumble came from hooves, the clacking from horns banging together.

The cattle were on the move.

Bo wasn't surprised. With all the shooting and yelling going on, it would have been shocking if the herd
hadn't
stampeded. As long as the cattle bolted in the right direction, they were doing the rustlers' work for them.

Bo had no doubt it was rustlers hitting the herd. He had worried that the drive would draw too much attention, and so it had.

A choking cloud of dust rose from the stampede and rolled across the landscape to mix with the acrid billows of powdersmoke. Bo called for Scratch to follow him and headed for the last place he had seen Lee, as best he could determine where it was. The dust and smoke blotted out the moon and stars now.

“Lee!” Bo called to his nephew, knowing that by doing so he might attract some bullets. “Lee, are you there?”

“Here, Uncle Bo,” the reply came through the murk.

A lot of the shooting had died away quickly once the cattle stampeded. The rustlers would be busy keeping the spooked beasts headed generally in the direction they wanted them to go.

Bo knew he had to round up his brothers and nephews as quickly as possible and light a shuck after the thieves.

He couldn't let them get away with that herd. The future of the Star C depended on it.

“Uncle Bo!” Lee said as he stumbled out of the clouds of dust and smoke carrying his rifle.

Bo hauled back on his reins and brought his horse to a stop.

“Did they get you?” he asked.

“No, but they came close enough I can still hear the angels singin'. The varmints came out of nowhere—”

There was no time for explanations now. Bo holstered his Colt, took the reins in his right hand, and held his left down to Lee while he took that foot out of the stirrup.

“Come on,” he said. “We've got to get after them.”

“I'll just slow you down,” Lee protested.

“We'll find a horse for you. There are bound to be some running loose.”

Bo knew that because he had seen at least two of the rustlers fall. And although he hated to think it, with all that lead flying around there was a good chance some of his family members had been hit, too. Maybe even killed.

If that turned out to be the case, the Creels would have an even bigger score to settle with those rustlers.

Lee clasped wrists with Bo, stuck his foot in the stirrup, and swung up behind his uncle. He had just settled down on the horse's back behind Bo's saddle when a fresh fusillade of gunfire racketed through the night.

These shots came from a different direction. Bo's head jerked around as he peered toward them and spotted muzzle flashes winking in the darkness.

These sounds of battle came from the camp . . .

Where he had left Lauralee.