Cougar's Prey (9781101544846) (22 page)

“There's not much left of me that's green,” Josiah said. “I can ride flank easy enough. I'll be dropping off in Goliad anyway, so the stay will be short for me.”

“Goliad? There isn't anything there.”

“I think there is,” Josiah said. “I didn't take you for a cook. You said you were a drover when we met at the saloon.”

“Cook's in jail, friend. Bowman needed a man with skills who could do a little more with Pecos strawberries and chuck wagon chicken than the previous man. I suppose I'm that man since I spent time in the kitchen at the abbey in Iowa. We'll see how the boys like my biscuits in comparison to the last cookie's. I won't be burning any beans and bacon, I can tell you that.”

“You got a good recipe for sourdough bullets and most of these fellas will follow you off a cliff.”

Leathers laughed out loud. It was a tenuous laugh that lasted only a second or two. Then the man grew serious again, his face void of any expression, just hard like a statue. “You wouldn't follow a man over a cliff, would you, Zeb? Still Zeb, right?”

“What else would it be?”

“You tell me.”

“No,” Josiah answered, just as flat and cold as Leathers had responded to him. “I wouldn't follow many men over a cliff. There are a few. Were a few. But most of them are dead now.”

“Ghosts of the war?”

Josiah nodded. “Of one war or another. There always seems to be one starting or ending, a chance given for bravery and fool's errands to change the world.”

Thin wrinkles appeared in Leathers's brow. “I knew there was some wisdom inside that hard skull of yours.”

“More experience than anything,” Josiah said. “I don't know a whit about wisdom. Nor do I want to. I'm just saying there are very few men in this world who have the heart to lead, to sacrifice enough to make a man want to follow them into battle, or across the land for unknown reasons. Seems I've done that most all of my life, and look where it has brought me.”

“Following another man, like the friend you were grieving back at the saloon?”

The air went out of Josiah's lungs. He didn't remember speaking about Juan Carlos to Leathers . . . but then he'd been drinking. Another reason to stay away from whiskey.

Josiah had to wonder what else he had said that he didn't recall. “My friend is not a captain, or a well-heeled officer, just a friend, and I'd just as soon leave it at that, thank you.”

“Sorry to offend you,” Leathers said. He started poking around the chuck wagon, stooped down and checked the security of the boot at the rear. “Maybe you should take the lead. Ever thought about that?”

Josiah glared at Leathers. “No need to lead if you're a hide trader.”

“I expect not.”

“Life on your own has its rewards,” Josiah said. “Besides, if a battalion of men are going to follow you off a cliff, you got to be the first one to jump. I'm not so fond of heights myself.”

“We're going to move soon, Zeb Teter, so you best find your place and start working for your wage, no matter how short the journey will be for you. But I'm glad to have a friend on the trail. You're a fine man to stand next to when the stools start flying.” Leathers stuck his hand out, an offer to shake and, perhaps, put the past behind them.

Josiah shook the man's hand firmly but not heartily, then nodded. “You, too, Leathers. It's good to know you're all right after that melee in Ingleside. Even though you're a religious man, I had the sense you'd seen more than one bar fight in your life. You're pretty spry for your age, even if you are a bit wiry.”

“Religion and I parted ways long ago, friend. That was man's doing more than anything else, but I have no regrets. My life is good. I'm fit as a fiddle and fine as a dandy man on a Sunday morning. You take care out there, and if things get troublesome, I could always use the help here at the wagon. You're welcome to help out here anytime.”

“Thanks,” Josiah said, walking away. He'd meant what he said, but he wasn't planning on washing pots anytime soon.

“There's a man out there by the name of Hughes. He's a good drover, knows more about moving cattle than any man I ever met,” Leathers hollered after Josiah. “He'll set you straight, but he won't tolerate laziness.”

Josiah stopped. “Why would you think I'm lazy?”

Leathers shrugged, tightened up the back door of the boot, the storage compartment at the rear of the wagon, and walked away, leaving Josiah feeling annoyed and angry all over again. He sure didn't understand Leathers at all. One minute he was a friend, then the next he was parsing words that drew dangerously close to starting a fight.

Josiah stalked off, unhitching Clipper, quickly hopping up into the saddle, and riding toward the herd as fast as he could, ready to find his spot and leave this part of Texas behind.

 

 

The herd of longhorns stretched out for almost two miles. There were at least two thousand of them, all in varying sizes and colors—some were nearly white or multiple shades of brown, while others were striped or brindled. The constant bawling of cattle, the horns clanking, the movement forward, bore little musicality, at least the kind a man like Josiah found comfort in.

He was a Ranger, not a cowboy, unaccustomed to the shouts of men, of whistling, of clapping after a stray cow. Riding in a cattle drive was a noisy, smelly proposition, and Josiah quickly found out he was much greener than he thought he was. It was like standing in the middle of one long clap of thunder, muted only by the softness of the ground his own horse was standing on.

He'd quickly found Hughes, a solid man the size of a good boulder, who'd told him to “keep the cows close, and don't cause me no trouble, or you'll be ridin' the long trail home on an empty belly.” With that, Hughes had disappeared, shouting orders as he went, moving cattle seamlessly that parted at his coming—or going—depending on how you looked at it.

As far as Josiah could tell, other than Scrap and the wrangler he'd been sent after to help, there were twelve cowboys driving the longhorns north. They'd cover about ten to fifteen miles a day, making the sixty-mile journey to Goliad equitable for Josiah, the timing just about right to meet up with Captain McNelly.

Josiah's experience in riding flank was completely void of any true knowledge, and he was more than nervous about it, wondering why he'd let Marshal Harlan talk him into signing on with the cattle drive in the first place. But it was a simple task, or at least it appeared that way. All he had to do was keep the cattle close. He could watch the men in the distance chase after strays, whooping, hollering, and whistling, to get them back to the herd, and figure out the best way to get it accomplished.

The longhorns were so strung out that it seemed there was always something to chase.

Clipper was not accustomed to the demands of a cattle drive, either. The constancy of cutting in and out, back and forth, chasing after this cow or that, seemed to quickly annoy the Appaloosa. There was nothing that Clipper enjoyed more than a full-out run. Short jaunts and breaking this way or that was hard on his untrained legs. Still, the horse responded to Josiah's demands, though sometimes with a snarl of the lip, a whinny, or a disgusted snort.

Josiah noticed Clipper's difficulty keeping up, but they soon found a rhythm to moving the cows.

After an hour or so, Josiah's eyes were always searching the upper scrubs for a wanderer. Luckily, he'd yet to rope a cow. Not that he'd never done it; he had, growing up on a small farm in East Texas. But his roping skills were a thing of the past, barely remembered, and the farm was by no means a cattle ranch; his family never had more than three head of cattle at one time and never a longhorn. He looked at the rope with anxiety, knowing sooner or later he'd have to take it in hand and try to capture a running, live cow.

The fact that it was spring was not lost on Josiah. It was impossible to forget it, what with all of the wildflowers in bloom and with the bulging bellies of so many pregnant cows. He began to wonder how the cows could make the journey in such a state, but the thought quickly passed when a shadow on a ridge caught his eye.

At first he thought it was a smaller cow, way off the trail, out of the cut of the rest of the longhorns. But the ridge was high, and the way up too rocky for a wanderer to make its way up there . . . unless it had started there.

No, it was a horse, and even though he was looking almost directly into the sun, squinting, Josiah was almost certain he saw a man squatting behind a rock, sighting a rifle at the herd.

Josiah whistled at the drover, Hughes, but could not raise the man's attention. The noise of the moving cattle was almost deafening. Beginnings were always difficult, and this one seemed to be no exception—the cattle were all strung out, and the cowboys had yet to settle them down completely.

Still focused on the man with the rifle, Josiah swept out of an easy ride and up a trail of broken rocks, keeping the man clearly in sight. He wasn't sure of the intention, if the man was with the drive or not, but any man pointing a gun down at a moving herd of longhorns wasn't up to any good as far as Josiah was concerned.

Just as Josiah crested the top of the hill, the man fired his first shot into the herd. The gun was a Sharps Big Fifty, a long rifle mostly used for hunting buffalo, and the report echoed out over the shallow valley like thunder.

Josiah spurred Clipper to a full run, drawing his Peacemaker out of his holster to get a shot off at the unidentified man.

The shooter was about a hundred yards away. It didn't take a second shot to accomplish the goal of starting a stampede. The longhorns were already nervous. Before the echo of the Sharps was silent, the cattle were spooked and running at full speed.

In nearly the blink of an eye, the ground began to shake, and a dense cloud of brown dust began to rise fully into the air like a series of explosions a mile long had gone off all at once.

Josiah pushed Clipper harder, trying to get a clear shot at the man with the Sharps, who'd caught sight of Josiah. From a distance, they were staring each other in the eye, albeit for a brief second—but long enough for Josiah to recognize the man.

Miguel, the guitar player, had come to wreak havoc on the cattle drive for some unknown reason. Josiah was now certain that he'd seen the man in the saloon. It didn't take a great deal of deductive skill to figure out that Miguel was trailing him but had yet to show himself and do direct harm.

There wasn't time, at the moment, to question his motives or actions.

Josiah pulled the trigger and did something he rarely did; instead of taking a careful aim and assessing the shot so it counted, he fanned the hammer, and pulled the trigger six times as fast as he could, emptying all of the bullets from his gun in the direction he saw Miguel standing.

The cloud of dust from below rose into the sky as fast as it had started and swirled around Josiah, completely enveloping him, blinding him momentarily, causing him to pull back on Clipper as hard as he could, bringing the Appaloosa to a full stop. He had no idea whether or not he'd hit Miguel. He sure hoped he had.

There were men on the cattle drive now at serious risk because of the actions of the guitar player. There was no reason Josiah could think of, nothing that made any sense to him, why Miguel would do such a thing—unless it was to take advantage of the start of the drive, when the wranglers were green, uncertain, maybe a little lazy as things got moving.

What better time to break up the herd and scatter as many cattle as possible to waiting rustlers,
Josiah thought to himself, lost in the dust cloud, still unable to move about freely. It was a ploy used before by Cortina and his ilk.

If the rustlers managed to run off with a hundred head of the two thousand that were heading north, then they'd add nearly four thousand dollars to their coffers. The coffers of Juan Cortina, most likely, if that was truly the case.

Which, of course, meant that Miguel had been working for Cortina all along, if Josiah's assumption was true.

The realization sent shivers up and down Josiah's spine. That would mean Maria Villareal had been taken in by Miguel, trusted him, let him know what she knew, that there were Texas Ranger spies in Corpus Christi. Not just one. At least two. Miguel had come looking, portraying himself as a friend, trying to alter Josiah's view of McNelly, when all along Josiah should have been more suspicious of Miguel. If he had been, then maybe, just maybe, Maria would still be alive, and Juan Carlos would not hate him—they would still be friends.

Trust no one
, McNelly had ordered. An order that Josiah had examined over and over again, certain now more than ever that he had failed.