“Who’s there?” Dag called, as he approached.
“That you, Mr. Dagstaff?” It was Skip Hughes, his massive bulk seeming small inside his black slicker, the brim of his hat sogged downward like a wilting flower.
“Yeah, Skip. That the herd beyond you?”
Hughes laughed harshly, a wry tone to it that made it humorless.
“What’s left of it, I reckon. Me’n some of the boys are holding these.”
“How many?”
“Maybe a thousand head or so. Hard to tell in this rain. Hell, you can’t see ten feet.”
Dag looked over a sea of spiked horns sprouting upward like naked trees in a dead forest. Visibility was more like twenty yards, but it was sporadic, as the wind gusted and lashed at them, rattling their raincoats with a tinny tattoo.
“They got a fire goin’ up ahead,” Hughes said. “Up against a big rock. Chuck wagon’s there, with a broken spoke. Whatcha got under your sougan, Mr. Dagstaff?”
“Lost calf.”
“Imagine we might have lost a few of the young ‘uns,” Hughes said.
Dag said nothing. He rode off into the needling rain and the darkness, following the contours of the bunched herd, passing men on horseback hunched down in their slickers like deformed creatures recently emerged from Dante’s Hell. None of them spoke to him and he did not speak to them.
There were other, smaller bunches of cattle packed together, their rumps to the wind and the slashing, needling rain, silent wraiths, still shivering from the cold and beaten into submission by the recent hail.
Dag saw the fire then, reflecting off a rock wall that was part of an outcropping risen up from the harsh land centuries ago. Then the wagon, part of it lit by a storm lantern flickering an orange light, swaying back and forth as if someone were signaling a passing train.
Jo was holding the storm lantern, while her father was wrestling with a wheel, trying to put in a new wooden spoke, his dark hulk hunched over the sawhorses, a small maul in his hand.
Jo was wearing overalls and a yellow slicker that glistened like wet butter in the lantern light.
Flagg came up on foot, away from the fire. “Dag,” he said.
“Jubal, take this little calf, will you? Put him by the fire. He’s shiverin’ like a dog shittin’ peach seeds.”
Dag lifted his sougan and Flagg reached for the calf, lifted it tenderly out of the crotch of the saddle.
“Hey there, little feller,” Flagg said. “We’ll get you warm right quick.”
Dag stepped out of the saddle, tied Firefly to the front of the wagon, behind the wet and disconsolate mules still hooked to it like beaten dogs to a stone sledge too heavy to pull.
“Fingers, can I help?” Dag asked when he walked around to the other side of the wagon. “Jo?”
“I’m fine,” Jo said.
“You can tilt this wheel a mite,” Fingers said. “I ‘bout got it, I think.”
Dag grabbed one side of the ironclad wheel and tilted it upward. Fingers slid one end of the wheel into a hole in the hub. The wood groaned as he pushed it in, then made a small snapping sound as it slid in and snugged up.
“Set the wheel down, Dag,” Fingers said. “Upright. I just want to tap the rim some to make sure she’s snug.”
Dag set the wheel down, slid his hands to the sides. Fingers took the hand maul and tapped on the upper rim.
“Snug as a bug,” he said.
Together, Dag and Fingers rolled the wheel over to the wagon. The rear end was jacked up, the bed resting on a boulder. They slid the wheel onto the axle and Fingers tapped in the peg that kept the wheel on, and slipped the thong over a flange on the wheel hub, so that if it ever slipped out, it would not be lost.
Jo let the lantern down, then shifted it to her other hand and rubbed the arm that had carried its weight.
“Should I put out the lantern, Daddy?” Jo asked.
“Naw, not yet. Hang it up on that hook underneath the bed.”
“What happened?” Dag asked.
“Wagon hit a big hole and we dropped a foot or so and hit a big old rock. Splintered one spoke.” He reached down and picked up the broken spoke to show it to Dag. “We was lucky, Dag. The wagon pitched and I thought we were going to go over. Me’n Jo shifted our weight and righted it. Just in time.”
Dag looked at Jo. She looked so forlorn with her rain-splashed face and hair streaming down around it like sodden black crepe. She was shivering.
“Let’s go over by the fire, Jo,” Dag said. “I’m some cold too.”
“Y-y-yes,” she stuttered. “I’m plumb froze through.” Then she laughed and Dag put an arm around her back and they walked to the blazing fire, Fingers following in their wake.
The rock reflected the heat toward them and Jo soon stopped shivering. The little calf was standing there, bleating pitifully like a little lost lamb, with Flagg’s hand stroking its back.
“Oh, Dag,” Jo said. “You saved the little tyke. He’s so cute.”
“He’s a heifer,” Dag chided. “She’s cold and hungry.”
“And I can’t feed her,” Jo said. “We need to find her mama.”
They stood there as riders came in and those who were warm left to relieve them. Dag rubbed his hands to bring back the circulation. His fingers were wrinkled and bone white at the tips, like some unknown vegetable preserved in brine.
The rain lessened, finally, but it was still cold.
“Never saw a colder rain,” Flagg said, “nor so much of it all at once’t.”
Dag nodded. He was thinking about the stampede. No one had mentioned it, as if bringing it up just then would be taboo. But he knew Flagg was thinking about the scattered cattle as well.
“Not all the cattle are scattered,” Dag said, after a few moments, turning his back to the fire. Someone—he didn’t know who—was putting more deadwood on it. “I passed Skip, who was with about a thousand head.”
“Dag, there’s near three thousand more we’ve got to get back when we can see our hands in front of our faces. I wish this damned rain would stop.”
“It will,” Dag said. “They won’t run any more tonight and we can start roundup in the morning when the sun comes up.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be a damned mess,” Flagg said. “And we’ll likely lose or never find a few.”
As if to emphasize Flagg’s dire prediction, a wolf howled from a long way off, its mournful cry so depressing, nobody by the fire even mentioned it. But they all shivered, not from the cold, but from the dread of what they might find in the morning. Jo huddled against Dag and he put an arm around her. She looked up at him in gratitude and smiled a weak smile, the rosebud of her lips faded to a pale bloodless remnant.
He wanted her at that moment so badly, he could taste those lips that he dared not kiss.
Chapter 25
Haggard, sleep-deprived drovers and cowhands roamed the desolate countryside, rounding up strays, searching for lost cattle. They found some dead calves, disemboweled, half-eaten by wolves, scavenged by coyotes, and now fed upon by turkey buzzards drawn to the smell of death.
Flagg told Dag that, near as he could tell, the stampeding cattle had not run more than three miles in a more or less straight line. However, there were cattle scattered all over the land on both sides of the old buffalo trail.
“How long do you figure getting ’em all back will take?” Dag asked.
“Two days ought to do it. But we won’t get ’em all back, Dag. My men have already had to shoot two steers with busted legs, and we’ve found at least five or six calves that didn’t make it. I’m just fearful that some of ’em might have wandered into the Canadian during the night. It’s runnin’ worse than that damned Mora.”