"Because I didn't realize you knew about it." Longarm stood up, pulling Lita to her feet. "Come on, put your clothes on. We got to get out of here."
"Porque? You tired hace chinga? "
"No, I ain't tired. If I had my druthers, I'd stay here all night with you. But I got business to look after."
By now, the movement of the cattle herd was much louder. Longarm judged the first riders hazing the steers would be getting to the ford within fifteen or twenty minutes. Dark as it was, there'd be no chance of him and Lita being seen, but the rustlers might have guards, outriders, ahead of the herd, or flanking it, and there was no place on the sandspit for them to hide.
He told Lita, "I'll carry you back to town. I got to go pick up my gear anyhow, get the horse saddled proper." He was pulling on his clothes as he spoke.
"Coos-tees. You go away, now?"
"For a spell. I don't know how long."
"But you come back, no?"
"Sure. I'll be back, soon as I can. You ain't seen the last of me yet, Lita." Then, in sober afterthought, he added, "At least, I hope you ain't."
Longarm dropped Lita off at the spot she pointed out, a shanty a short distance from the plaza. He rode to the corral and in swift silence, working by feel, saddled Tordo. Then he made short work of collecting his bedroll, saddlebags, and rifle from his room. Within little more than half an hour he was back at the sandspit, in time to hear distantly the splashings of the last few steers being driven across the river.
There wasn't enough light for him to tell how many men were riding herd. By the same token, the rustlers wouldn't be able to see him, either, sitting at a safe distance from the crossing, getting his clues from sounds alone. He waited until the hoofbeats and splashings and blattings subsided, and the rustlings in the chamizal on the Mexican side of the border were barely audible. Then he nudged Tordo ahead and across the Rio Grande in pursuit of the stolen herd.
Chapter 10
Following the rustlers was easy, even in the dark. The cattle cut noisily through the belt of chamizal that extended only a mile or two beyond the river, then angled south and west. Longarm stopped in the brush to let the steers and their drivers get safely ahead of him, for after the chamizal ended there was no cover. Past the strip of brush, the land ran level for a score of miles before it rose at the beginning of the foothills of the Serranias de Burro, farther west. It was a harsh plain, as Longarm saw when daybreak came, a place of scanty vegetation, rolling gently between river and foothills, dotted by groves of mesquite scrub and cactus, cut by dry arroyos and an occasional shallow canyon in which there might run a thread-thin stream, more creek than river.
For once, Longarm was pleased with the glacial slowness shown by the army's procurement branch. The ordnance map he carried in his saddlebags dated from the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846, and had been prepared for troops being staged to invade Mexico from the Texas border. It covered the area he was traveling through in very good detail. Studying it, he could figure what he'd do if he was driving a stolen herd to Laredo, and was able to ride unworried at a distance from the rustlers.
There were no settlements within more than sixty miles of the Burro foothills, no people to see the moving cattle — or the lone rider following them. Somewhere to the south, probably along the Zarro or San Carlos River, he was pretty sure there'd be a ranch used by the ring that ran the new Laredo Loop. They'd need such a place, where brands could be altered and bills of sale forged to allow the cattle to be returned to Texas and sold at the Laredo railhead without questions being raised.
As he'd expected, the rustlers turned the herd almost due south after angling in from the border. Longarm's map had led him to the most likely place ahead of the slower-moving herd; he'd gotten to the shallow valley he'd guessed would be their path just before sunup. Finding a cut in which to hide the dapple, Longarm had waited an hour before the steers passed by, a good three-quarters of a mile distant, too far to see anything except the dust cloud they'd raised in passing. He'd leaned back, resting against a convenient rock, while he chewed jerky and hardtack and sipped from the canteen. He'd given up wishing for a cheroot. After having failed to find any at Fort Lancaster or Los Perros, he'd reminded himself philosophically that he'd intended to give up the damned things, anyhow.
Stomach filled, he'd dozed. There was no great hurry. The herd would leave an easy trail to follow, and he'd had a busy day and night. When he woke up, he was sweating; the sun was blazing clear in a bowl of cloudless blue. The trail ahead promised to be a hot one, and his map told him it led through a baked, water-scarce land. He was splashing water from his cupped hand into Tordo's mouth when the riders passed. Sunlight glinting from a bit or strap buckle, or perhaps from the silver conchos of a hat-band, alerted him to their approach. Their path was too close for comfort, he thought. He led the gray deeper into the narrow arroyo and clamped a hand over his muzzle. He wasn't sure whether Tordo had the habit of whinnying at the approach of strange horses; he'd never been with the gray in a situation like this before. The restraining hand eliminated a needless risk.
There were four riders. Longarm watched their backs as they loped their mounts in a direction that would take them straight to the ford, and wished he could've seen their faces. Old son, he told himself, those hombres backtracking has got to mean just one thing. They've left the steers with two or three men up along the frail, and there'll be another herd crew taking over to push the critters on to their headquarters. And that's the place I want to find.
Mounting, he set Tordo to a frail-burning lope, picking up the broad path of droppings and faint hoofprints that the steers had left. He kept a close watch for dust ahead of him, but saw none. Instead, after he'd covered four or five miles, he saw the thin line of smoke from a small fire rising from a canyon half a mile ahead. Neither riders nor steers were visible. Longarm risked riding almost to the rim of the canyon before dismounting. He looped Tordo's reins over a mesquite limb and took his rifle from the scabbard that hung slanted in front of the saddle. Dodging from one area of scant cover to the next, he worked his way slowly to the rim.
A small creek, little more than a series of bathtub-sized pools connected by a trickle that in places narrowed to a hand's width, ran through the canyon. Steers straggled along the creek. Some drank from the pools, some looked for graze on the barren soil, others just stood staring vacantly into nowhere. Longarm couldn't see all the brands, but he noted that at least five were represented in the herd. It was a typical rustler's herd, small enough to be moved quickly and quietly by just a handful of men.
At one of the pools upstream from where the herd milled, two men squatted beside a tiny campfire. A tin skillet sat canted on a boulder near them, beside the tiny blaze that had drawn Longarm to the spot. Their horses were unsaddled, tethered to a bush a few paces from the fire. The men were eating from tin plates.
Their backs were to him, so Longarm took his time studying the way the land lay. There were no boulders or rock outcrop-pings near the fire big enough to give the two any kind of cover. Their rifles were with their saddles, beside the tethered horses. He had the advantage of both position and surprise, and the need for information outweighed the easier alternative of dogging the rustled herd to the gang's headquarters. Longarm sighted quickly and sent a slug from the Winchester into the skillet.
Amid splinters of rock and with a metallic clanging that started the steers jumping and running aimlessly, the skillet bounced three feet into the air. The men dropped their plates and leaped to their feet, hands reaching for revolver butts.