The old man sighed. “Would have been a better bet,” he admitted, “if it was Caleb York coming.”
“If you’re pinning our hopes on a dead man, Papa, we really are in a bad way.”
He didn’t seem to be listening to her. To himself he said, “It would have been so easy for that man. As easy as it would have been for me. Back when these sorry eyes could see.”
Her arm still in his, she tugged at him. “Come inside, Papa. Come inside. Coffee’s on the stove.”
“I’ll be in, girl. Leave me be.”
She left him there in the moonlight, staring out at the dissipating dust cloud his men had left, as if he could see it.
Moonlight lent a rugged beauty to the three open wagons loaded down with barrels of water, positioned a dozen yards apart, with the cowhands’ horses tied up behind them. Blankets had already been soaked down and tied onto the backs of the saddled and ready steeds. One cowhand was back there with the animals, tending them, steadying them.
Another dozen yards down the gentle slope were three four-foot-deep trenches, each with room enough for three men with rifles. For a short while, Whit moved from one trench to another, keeping low, passing along instructions, until completing the armed trio in the center. Beyond the trenches in high grass, a scattering of underfed cows stood stupidly under the moon, as if contemplating jumping over it.
“We’re ready,” Whit told the two other middle-trench cowboys.
Stubby Jerry Morris, not as dumb as his close-set eyes made him look, said, “You see anything out there, Whit?”
“Not yet. It’ll come.”
Roughneck Rafe Connor, black handlebar mustache falling below his face, said, “I sure as hell hope Old Man Cullen knows what the hell he’s doin’.”
Two utterances of “hell” in one outburst seemed disrespectful to Whit, but he let it go.
Jerry said, “I ain’t known ol’ Cullen to be wrong yet.”
“Me neither,” Rafe admitted with a sigh. “But there just ain’t enough of us.”
Jerry shook his head. “We can’t know how many men Gauge’ll send.”
All three men were peering over their Winchesters into the nearby tall grass, which riffled in the breeze, tickling the legs of the handful of cows.
Calmly, Whit said, “Don’t matter how many there are. Not if we’re ready and they ain’t.”
Rafe, always something of a complainer, said, “But how do we know we’re in the right spot? They could come in over there, or over yonder, and we’d never get wise till it was too late to do a damn thing about it.”
Whit placed a patient hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “We’re right where we need to be. Out there is where the high grass is. Gauge knows our line shack is just over the ridge behind us, and figures to run them cows right on through it. Losin’ Mr. Cullen some steers and maybe a man or two and cost him considerable.”
Jerry said, “Sure glad we moved them beeves out. You think we left enough of them scrawny ones to sucker ’em?”
“Should be just what they want to see,” Whit said. “They’ll just figure the rest of the herd’s bedded down. Anyway, they wouldn’t risk a fire right by the main herd.”
“Why not?”
“Think about it, boyo. A fire would stampede ’em right onto Gauge’s range. All his cows would join in and there’d be hell to pay.”
Rafe said, “Would that be so bad? Maybe that’d be the last of Gauge, then.”
Whit shook his head. “Too high a cost. Steady your rifle, boy, and don’t think about nothin’ but what’s out there and about to come at you.”
“Okay,” Rafe said, and shivered, though it wasn’t all that cold. “I just hope we ain’t the Alamo and they’s Santa Anna.”
The men with rifles watched in quiet silence for five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Then a few along the line began to chat in their boredom.
“You know,” Rafe said, “those dumb cows’ll get caught in the cross fire.”
“That just means,” Jerry said, “we’ll have a hell of a barbecue tomorrow.”
Whit whispered harshly, “Hold it down. I heard something...”
Silence took over again.
Then: snorting horses and metal clanking.
Whit pointed.
Shadowy figures on horseback were moving toward the edge of the high grass. Somewhere a steer bawled, and horses were brought to an abrupt whinnying halt.
Silhouetted men climbed down from their saddles. Across the grass, orange flashes, chest-high, lit the night like plump fireflies. Then lower, bigger pops of yellow-orange-blue seemed to float toward the watchers while half-a-dozen intruders with torches dropped blossoms of flame onto the grass. For now, the cattle ignored them.
Whit said, “They’ve made their move. Now!”
The Bar-O cowhands down in their trenches let go with a fusillade of rifle fire over the heads of the scrawny beeves.
One man howled and dropped. Another man fell without a sound, disappearing into a fire he’d just set. Dead already, or he’d be screaming.
“It’s a trap!” somebody yelled on the other side of the grass.
Deputy Vint Rhomer’s voice! Whit thought.
The remaining intruders — four? five? — tossed their torches and ran to their horses, mounted them, and tried to head across the burning grass, but their horses protested, neighing, rearing, damn near throwing them. Bullets falling around them like deadly rain, Rhomer and his raiders retreated, the deputy’s voice rising above the crackle of flames: “Clear out! Clear out!”
Then the intruders were swallowed back into the night, leaving a field whose fiery edge was spreading, the cattle starting to bray in fear, stirring but too far apart from each other to stampede in any meaningful way.
Whit raised up in the trench and held his rifle high in one hand like an attacking Apache. “Bring those horses and blankets up!”
The men scrambled from the trenches and circled behind the water-barrel-loaded wagons to get the horses. The cowhands climbed up into their saddles and rode across the high grass to where it was burning, then cut across the edges of the burning patch of range, never exposing the horses so directly to the flames that they, too, would protest, cutting in, cutting out, expertly dragging those soaked blankets across the burning grass, making it smaller and smaller, until in minutes the fire was doused and only gray wisps of smoke remained. That, and a scorched smell to the air and a strip of blackened prairie.
Most of the cows had just stood there through all this; a few had wandered off, but two had been drilled by one side of the fracas or the other. Jerry had been right — there would be good eating tomorrow.
The men gathered between the trenches and the wagons. Everybody was breathing hard and grinning, some laughing. Whit remained somber.
He said, “Anybody hurt?”
Holding on to his arm, some red seeping between his fingers, Jerry said, “I got grazed. Nothin’ some alcohol won’t cure.”
Whit knew the cowhand probably meant alcohol poured down his gullet, not onto the wound.
Rafe said, “We got two of them.”
“Yeah,” Whit said, nodding, letting out air. “I saw them go down and nobody of theirs bothered pickin’ ’em up. Let’s check ’em out — pretty sure one’s dead, but the other may just be wounded. So six-guns ready, gents.”
Whit was on his way to one of the fallen when, from over to his left, he heard Jerry call out: “This here’s Stringer!”
The foreman went over for a look. Bending for a closer view, he said, “Stringer, all right. Part of the first batch Gauge brought to town. Dead as hell — head shot.”