Hell on the Prairie Read Online Free PDF Page A

Before what?” chorused half a dozen
drovers. They knew the story.
    “ Well, just before. Made a man just
wanna get plumb nekkid before he got down to business.”
    “ Plumb?” one of the younger drovers
asked, wide-eyed. His name was Alfred Duncan, but for some reason
everybody called him Sonny.
    “ Plumb, stick-stark nekkid. An’ you
know what? Rose’d take a washcloth and a basin of water and wash
all the trail dust offa ya. Ever’ bit, ever’where.”
    “ Gol,” Sonny said, fingering his
crotch.
    “ Gol is right,” Long Tom said. “Ain’t
nothing like rolling around in a bed of roses with a purty gal who
smells like roses all over, and I do mean all over.”
    “ You sniffed her
everywhere?”
    “ Son, they ain’t much about Lilac Rose
that this ol’ son don’t know. Once I get to San Antone, she’s the
onliest gal I see.”
    Billy didn’t say anything, but he
purely wondered what it would be like to be with a woman that way. He picked up his saddle
blanket and saddle and lugged them over to the remuda. Lorenzo
Gomez wrangled for Brodrick, and the boss wouldn’t stand for any
ragging on Lorenzo because of his Mexicanness. “Best man I ever
seen with cayuses,” Brodrick said. “Don’t want any of you be coming
down on Lorenzo because he looks Mexican. His folks’s been in Texas
longer’n any of us. Treat’im with respect, dammit.”
    “ Noches ,”
Lorenzo said.
    “ Need to catch the roan,” Billy said.
“Midnight watch tonight, n’ she’s the best night horse in my
string.”
    “ Go get him, Billy Boy. He waits
patiently, I think.”
    “ Gracias ,”
Billy said, shaking out a loop in his lariat. He stepped into the
rope corral that kept the remuda from straying, and tossed the loop
over the head of the roan he called Berry.
    The roan followed meekly, good-natured horse
that she was, even though Lorenzo called her “he.” Billy had picked
a soft-looking place to sleep, and –as all drovers did –he tied
Berry to a peg he’d driven into the ground before he bedded down.
When he didn’t have night duty, he put down the saddle blanket to
sleep on and covered up with his slicker, but the night was clear
and the weather balmy, so Billy just curled up on the ground and
went to sleep, using his arm for a pillow. The Remington lay in its
new holster, near at hand.
    While Billy slept, his right hand lying next
to Berry’s peg, six men on big powerful horses approached the herd
from the wooded hills to the west. The herd’s night riders, who
crossed paths north and south as they circled the bedded cattle,
were out of sight. The dark riders spread until they were fifteen
to twenty feet apart. Each carried a heavy saddle blanket in one
hand. Occasionally starlight would glance from the riders’ eyes,
giving them a peculiarly sinister appearance.
    “ Ready.” The order came almost too
quietly to be heard. The riders shook out the blankets and held
them to the herd side of their horses with both hands.
    “ Now!”
    As one, the riders popped the blankets and
hollered. In an instant, the herd was on its feet and running.
     
    3
     
    The thunder of more than two thousand cattle
on the run could not be mistaken for any other sound. The rumble of
running hooves no sooner reached Billy’s body than he threw off the
slicker, grabbed the Remington and jumped to his feet, pulled
Berry’s reins free, and leaped aboard. On the run, he laced his
belt through the Remington’s holster and let it hang naturally.
“Move it, Berry babe.” Billy slapped the mare on the rump with his
hat and he took out after the spooked cattle like a scared
coyote.
    Walt Brodrick came alongside, his black
stallion easily keeping pace with Berry. “Along the river, kid,” he
hollered. “Keep ’em headed north.”
    “ Right-o,” Billy hollered back.
Brodrick twicked the black’s reins, and horse and rider disappeared
into the dust cloud that followed the stampeding steers.
    Berry and Billy headed down the south