Big Ben was severing the last of the ropes. Brock swung onto his mount and began to drive the Crow horses east. It didn’t take much to set them in motion: a few swings of his rope and a few shouts, and taut nerves did the rest.
A warrior with a bow came from behind a tepee. Either he had been off in the woods the whole time, or he had cut a hole in the back of his lodge and forced his body through the opening. Now he raised his bow, an arrow nocked to fly.
Kid Falon fired two shots so rapidly they boomed a fraction of a second apart. Punched by the slugs, the Crow fell against the tepee and slid to the ground.
“Yeehaw!” Big Ben Brody had heaved his bulk into his saddle and was on the other side of the herd, goading stragglers.
Brock was pleased. So far it had gone smoothly. But he mustn’t be cocky. They wouldn’t be safe until they put a couple of hundred miles behind them.
The Crow horses filed between tepees. A dog came bounding out to yap at them and was promptly shot by Curly Means. As was inevitably the case, several other dogs had preceded it in death on Curly’s side of the circle.
As the last of the horses thundered into the night, Brock looked back and howled like a wolf. It was the signal for the Kid, Noonan, and Curly to leave off harrying the Crows and catch up.
Brock concentrated on keeping the horses together. Across the way, Big Ben was swinging his rope and yipping like a seasoned cowhand. Only Curly Means, though, had ever actually been a puncher, and then only for a short while. As he once told Brock, “Spendin’ the rest of my life smellin’ the hind end of cows didn’t appeal to me, so I took to ridin’ the high lines.”
No explanation was needed. In Brock’s opinion, cowboys had to have the dustiest, dirtiest, most thankless job around. For a measly thirty dollars a month they worked themselves to the bone. That wasn’t for Brock. He never liked hard work. Back in Illinois, he had spent more time at his favorite fishing hole and in frolicking with friends than doing the chores his parents wanted him to. One thing led to another, and on his sixteenth birthday his father gave him an ultimatum: Either start pulling his weight or get the hell out. Brock hadn’t been back since.
The others had varied backgrounds. Noonan and Big Ben had served in the army of the Confederacy. When the war ended, they did what thousands of men their age were doing and drifted west. The Kid had never done much of anything except gamble and shoot anyone who looked at him crosswise.
Brock knew how the path he had chosen might well end. But he could never go back to leading a law-abiding life. All those years he watched his father work at a job he hated had taught him an invaluable lesson. The straight and narrow was more than a path: It was a cage. It hemmed people in as surely as if they were ringed by iron bars. They weren’t free to do what they wanted, when they wanted. From cradle to grave they were slaves to laws and conduct that governed everything they did. That wasn’t for him.
Pistols were cracking. Brock saw a handful of Crows running across the circle, but the Colts of the Kid and Curly dispersed them.
The country was fairly open. It wasn’t long before Brock Alvord spotted the agency cabins. Earlier the cabins had been dark, but now lights had come on and people were standing outside in their nightshirts and robes, trying to divine what all the commotion was about.
From out of a corral near the largest cabin came a rider. He wore a nightshirt and pants and had a rifle in his left hand. And he was undeniably white.
An agency employee. Brock frowned. The last thing he wanted was a gunfight with a white man. The Hoodoos had gone unchecked as long as they had in large part because they never stole from whites and never killed whites when on a raid. It was Brock’s cardinal rule.
When they weren’t on raids, it was another matter. What his men did on their own time was none of Brock’s affair. There had been shooting scrapes; most involved disputes over cards or women. Most but not all. The Kid had shot a few people for the hell of it. He always claimed self-defense afterward, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. The Kid loved to kill. It was that simple.
That business with the cavalry troopers was typical. The Kid and Noonan had sat in on a card game with three soldiers. Poor losers, the boys in uniform had accused the Kid and Noonan of cheating. One hot word had led to another, and hot lead was slung. The result: three dead soldiers and a boost in the bounty on the Hoodoos.
The agency man Brock had spotted was angling to intercept the herd. “Stop!” he bawled. “Stop in the name of the United States government!”
Idiots were born every second. Placing his coiled rope over his saddle horn and sliding his leg against it to hold it in place, Brock yanked out his Winchester. He had to act before any of the others did. Particularly the Kid.
“Stop!” the man repeated and raised his rifle.
Firing a Winchester accurately from the back of a horse at full gallop took some doing. Fortunately, Brock had some experience. His shot brought the agency man’s mount crashing to the ground and tumbled the rider into a wash.
In a cloud of dust, the stolen horses swept on by the cabins. Brock breathed a sigh of relief. He replaced his Winchester, reclaimed his rope, and spent the next several hours guiding the herd south. The horses were tired and flagging when he brought them to a halt, and his own mount was lathered with sweat.
Big Ben Brody came trotting around. “We did it! Those Crows are as easy to steal from as a passel of babies.”
“We were lucky,” Brock said.
“Hell, the Kid and me could wipe out that whole village by our lonesome.”
Brock doubted it. The Crows were formidable warriors who for years had held their own against the Blackfeet and the Sioux.
Curly Means trotted up. “There’s no sign of anybody on our trail. The Kid and me flipped to see who rides drag, and he lost.”
“I want both of you back there until we reach the first relay,” Brock instructed him.
“How about after?”
“Flip another coin. Just so we get these horses to the Bar K without losing any.” Brock had a potential buyer in mind. The last time he delivered rustled horses to Will Seever, the owner of the Bar K in Colorado Territory, Seever had expressed an interest in acquiring more.
Curly shook his head. “No, I meant after we deliver them.”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead. What does it matter?” Brock would do as he always did and hide most of his money in a secret hole at one of their relays. He had thousands squirreled away and planned to have thousands more before he called it quits. If he lived that long.
“The Kid has been makin’ noise about Painted Rock,” Curly said.
Brock had been expecting something like this. “Talk to him. Use that charm of yours. Persuade him to let it be. Abby’s death was an accident. That should be that.”
Curly lifted his reins. “I’ll try, amigo. But you know how the Kid is when he’s made up his mind. If you hear a shot, come a runnin’. He might blow my head off for stickin’ my nose in.”
Brock tried to dismiss it as of no consequence, but for the rest of the night and well into the next morning he mulled over how to make his case. By then he was convinced no one was chasing them. They stayed a whole day at the next relay to rest the herd. Brock used the opportunity to sound the Kid out.
Kid Falon was seated on an upended barrel, cleaning one of his Colts by candlelight. “I’m thinkin’ of buyin’ me a derringer to keep in my boot like Curly does,” he said as Brock walked up. “Any you can recommend?”
“I’ve never used a hideout gun myself,” Brock responded. “And it’s not guns I want to talk about. It’s Painted Rock.”