Then the stranger swung his horse around, and as he passed by Willa, she raised a hand for him to stop.
He pulled up on the reins.
“Thank you,” she said simply, “and good luck.”
Her back to the others, with only him seeing, she kissed her palm and held her hand out to him. He took the hand, held it briefly, his eyes holding hers for several long moments.
Then he rode off.
They watered their horses at a nearby stream in a stand of cottonwood and made their plans.
With everyone circled around, Whit said, “We’d better get to riding, too. If Gauge’s bunch makes it through the pass with that herd of theirs, they’ll post a handful of men and hold us off long enough to have those beeves well on their way to the railhead.”
His hat off, scratching at his white temple, Mathis said, “Leave us handle that, Whit.”
Whit frowned. “What?”
The rancher put a hand on the Cullen foreman’s shoulder. “Son, you and Willa got other fish to fry.”
“No... we’re all in this together.”
Gerrity came up and put a hand on the foreman’s other shoulder. “We already had a powwow and you been outvoted. You take half these men and see if you can find them Bar-O cattle.”
“Listen,” Willa said, shaking her head, “this is bigger than just the Bar-O—”
“No,” Mathis said, shaking his head back at her, “you listen, young lady. In a way, all this whole damn mess is our doin’, smaller ranchers and townsfolk alike, for lettin’ Gauge get as far as he got. Independence-minded sorts sometimes don’t remember that when their neighbor is in trouble, trouble’s about to show up on your own doorstep, too.”
“I know,” she said, “but—”
“ ‘But’ nothin’,” Gerrity said. “If we succeed, we’re about to go off and destroy Gauge’s cattle. And if our stock turns out to be infected, too, we’ll have to get rid of all them. That means we may be needin’ starter cattle for next year. It’s George Cullen we’ll turn to. So you’ll be doin’ us a favor, gettin’ that healthy herd back in the right hands.”
The other rancher said, “Miss Cullen, best you go home and stay at your father’s side. Take a few men with you.”
Gerrity was nodding. “No tellin’ what Gauge might pull at this point.”
“No,” she insisted, shaking her head, ponytail swinging. “Papa’s not alone there, and you can use another experienced hand.”
“I just hope,” Mathis sighed, “that we ain’t too late.”
Frowning, Willa asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Gauge may be ahead of us. He may’ve figured that we’d try meetin’ up with the buyers at the relay station, and’s already sent somebody out there to stop us.”
Gerrity said, “And here we sit, with all our hopes pinned on one duded-up stranger.”
Whit said, “It’s a safe-enough bet.”
All heads turned his way.
“I was dead wrong about him,” the foreman said. “He’ll do right by us or die tryin’. Meantime, the rest of us need to help you destroy that infected herd.”
Shaking his head firmly, Mathis said, “Face it, Whit — you’re outnumbered. You’re gonna do it our way. Half these men are going with you and get back those healthy cows.”
There was no more arguing it. Whit did as he’d been told, and soon they were watching half of the men ride off in a dust cloud, hooves pounding.
Then Willa, Whit, and the rest rode off in the other direction, just as hard.
Tulley’s morning had been eventful.
He had spent several hours of it under the boardwalk, curled up in its coolness with the bottle of rotgut he’d bought at the Victory. It had cost him a whole dollar out of the five he’d been given, highway robbery, but seemed worth it at the time.
Only thing was, damn it, that fool conscience of his had come kicking him in the hindquarters like a mule.
And speaking of mules, early this morning, the stranger had give him all that money on the condition that Tulley buy back his mule Gert from Hitchens at the livery stable. That was what come of running at the mouth around a new acquaintance. Drunks had a terrible bad habit of telling people their life stories.
When he first come to town, Tulley was sober for a spell, and got to thinking that the life of a prospector hadn’t been so bad. That had been his vocation before taking on the job of (as the stranger put it) town character. It beat sweeping out stables and doing odd jobs and sleeping in alleyways, didn’t it?
Tulley had prospected for two whole days in the foothills before he remembered why he’d stopped doing it in the first place. Back in town, he resold Gert to Hitchens for three dollars, drank it up in two days, and Gert became just another female (well, sort of female) memory in the pages of an increasingly hazy past history.
Trouble with Gert was, she wasn’t so hazy a memory, living in the stable as she did, where Tulley bedded down much of the time. Having that damn mule around served as a nagging reminder of his failings.
This morning, not that long after dawn, the stranger had given him that five dollars to buy Gert back and ride out to the Cullen spread to offer his services as a sort of guide. Nobody around Trinidad knew those foothills better than old Tulley.
The desert rat had agreed, shaking hands with the stranger, who had ridden off, after which Tulley waited till the saloon opened at ten and bought his bottle. Crazy part was, he never uncapped the thing. He lay in the coolness under the boardwalk with the bottle in one hand and the rest of them dollars in the other.
Finally, around noon, he opened that damn bottle, chugged down several slugs of it, enjoying the burning in his belly, then capped it and went over to the livery stable and talked Hitchens into selling Gert back to him for three dollars.
When Tulley was riding out of town on Gert — no saddle, just an Injun blanket — Ralph from the telegraph office started in, yelling at him.
Tulley pulled back on Gert’s reins (Hitchens threw them in).
“You want to make half a buck, Tulley?”
“Sure.”
The clerk delivered the coin and also a slip of paper. “Run this wire out to the Cullen place. I think it may be real important. Can I trust you to do that?”
“Well, sure you can.” Wasn’t he already headed out there, anyway?
“If you drink it up, I won’t be pleased.”
“I ain’t just on this mule, friend. I’m on the wagon.”
So he had delivered the wire to old Mr. Cullen, who give him two bits more for his trouble. Actually, a ranch hand took the wire because the old man was blind and needed someone to read it to him. Tulley stood there while the man rattled it off to his boss, but the thing was just some business nonsense that Tulley couldn’t follow.
“Mr. Cullen,” Tulley said, on the porch of the ranch house as its owner and his man were about to go in, “you know that stranger? He wanted me to offer to help you look for your cows in them foothills.”
“What?” The old boy seemed kind of out of sorts since he heard what was in that wire. “Oh, uh... they left hours ago, Tulley. I doubt you could find them. But I thank you for the offer.”
Then Tulley remembered something he’d overheard back in town that might be of interest to the rancher, and he shared it, the news upsetting the blind man even more than that wire, though Tulley didn’t really understand why.
Things in and around Trinidad had been happening so fast, since the stranger come to town, that an old sot like him could barely keep track or make sense of it.
After that, part of him wanted to head back to town with his bottle and sell the mule to Hitchens again. But Tulley liked the stranger, looked up to him like he hadn’t anybody for as long as he could remember, and for no reason he could understand, Tulley just didn’t want to let the man down.