Cougar's Prey (9781101544846) (24 page)

Leathers handed Josiah a tin of cooling beans and bacon. “This ought to get you through the evening, brother,” the cookie said.

“Thanks, I appreciate it. It's a little late to hunt down rabbit for stew.”

“Good luck with that in this pitiful land.”

“You don't like South Texas?”

“I like the green fields of Iowa. Spring stirs the poet in me there. This desolation does little for my constitution except darken my mood,” Leathers said.

“Well, thanks again.” Josiah extended his hand for a shake. “I 'spect we'll see you farther north.”

“God willing.” Leathers shook Josiah's hand and smiled as warmly as he could, exposing his mouth full of rotting teeth a little more than normal.

“I suppose.” Josiah retreated, pulled his hand away, walked over to Clipper, and packed away the tin of food. He could smell the beans and still hadn't eaten, but the prospect of leaving the drive so soon and chasing after a bunch of rustlers had caused him to lose his appetite.

“It's about gall dern time,” Scrap said. “We barely got any light left at all.”

“The trail isn't going to be that hard to find,” Josiah snapped back.

And he was right. Once he settled into his own saddle and headed away from the cowboy camp, up over the hill where Miguel had fired the shot from, Josiah picked up a trail of hooves and beaten-down vegetation heading west, back toward Corpus Christi.

The rising full moon cast enough light onto the trail for Josiah and Scrap to keep traveling at an easy pace. It was hard to tell how much time had passed, maybe an hour, maybe two, since they'd left the camp. Once they had settled into the ride and were able to identify the tracks left by the stolen longhorns, Scrap had gone silent, riding behind Josiah, keeping a decent distance between the two horses.

Traveling at night had its risks. The horses could step into a badger hole or onto an unseen rattlesnake, and both prospects could cause harm, or even death, to either of the men's trusted steeds. Still, with the moonlight providing clear passage, Josiah felt it necessary to keep going.

No man, no matter how skilled, was going to keep a herd of nearly a hundred longhorns moving into the night. They would have to stop, and that made the risk all that much easier to take. The sooner they found the herd, the better.

Josiah wanted nothing more at that moment than to find Miguel and the rustlers and put an end to whatever scheme the guitar player was involved in. It was a turn from his sobering mood back at the cowboy camp, where he felt responsible for the stampede. One more thing gone wrong, at his hand, to weigh him down.

Guilt was not an emotion that Josiah was accustomed to experiencing, much less carrying around like this, but lately, that was about all he could feel. Guilt and regret. But he agreed with Don Bowman. The rustlers would have found the herd anyway and taken advantage of a green and anxious crew. The theft really had nothing to do with his presence among longhorns.

Miguel was the only card in that deck that didn't make sense, and Josiah was focused on finding the man, now, so he could toss off the guilt about the stampede and get on to Goliad.

Somewhere in the distance, a coyote yipped, then started barking at the moon.

Josiah slowed Clipper down to barely a trot. The coyote was north of them, not too far away, less than a mile. There was nothing unusual about the yipping. The coyote didn't sound alarmed or on the hunt, but something made Josiah take notice—a chill ran up and down his spine, and then it was gone as soon as the coyote went silent.

Scrap eased up alongside Josiah. “What's the matter, Wolfe?”

“Don't know.”

“Whoa,” Scrap said, softly, stopping Missy.

Josiah quickly followed suit, and looked at Scrap curiously. “You see something?”

“There.” Scrap pointed to a dark lump, ahead about ten feet, just on the side of the trail.

“I knew something was wrong. What is it?”

“Don't know, but I'm going to find out.” Scrap slid off Missy and pulled his gun from his holster at the same time.

Josiah followed suit and in the blink of an eye was a step behind Scrap.

“It's a calf. A newborn,” Scrap said, squatting. “Afterbirth's about half licked off, and the legs are still not stiff. It ain't been dead long.”

“Coyote smells a free dinner.”

“Probably so. Happens a lot on cattle drives. Mommas drop calves, and they're forced to leave 'em behind, or a cowboy gets the bad luck of havin' to put it out of its misery. Shoot it, leave it for whatever comes along. Seems like a waste to me, but a nursin' mother slows down the travel. I heard some drives scoop up the calves and put them in a wagon, then let 'em loose to find their mothers at night.”

“A calf always knows its mother,” Josiah whispered.

“And a mother always knows her calf. They find each other, and the owner has more head at the end of the drive than he started with.” Scrap stood up. “Nothin' we can do now. Them thieves weren't gonna slow down for a cow birth. They got money on their mind and nothin' else.”

Josiah turned his back on the calf and walked slowly back to Clipper. He could smell the dead calf, the sourness of the afterbirth, and almost taste the death that was lingering in the night air. It was a recipe that could weaken the strongest stomach if a man let his mind—and heart—linger long enough and consider the grieving mother, lost in the darkness, bawling for her dead baby.

There was no question that Josiah felt akin to the unknown beast, knew the loss. But he also knew that something didn't have to be dead for a person to grieve. He missed Lyle more at that moment than he had realized. It was getting harder and harder to push the grief away, the homesickness.

And then there was the loss of his friendship with Juan Carlos, somehow reflected by the moonlight in the dead calf's eyes. The old Mexican had held nothing but blackness and anger in his eyes when he'd ordered Josiah away from the camp of shacks, threatening to kill him. It was the end, an unquestionable finality, and that was just as hard to take as far as Josiah was concerned.

“We need to find these rustlers,” Josiah said.

“We're gettin' close,” Scrap answered, as he climbed back up on Missy.

 

 

A fire burned under a long overhang of limestone. An attempt had been made to keep the fire low, but it was easily seen by two pairs of eyes that were looking for anything out of the ordinary. Scrap and Josiah had spotted the fire at the same time, and both of them were surprised that they hadn't encountered any kind of resistance, at the very least a man standing guard on the perimeter.

A few sad moos reached up into the air, floating on a cool breeze. The moon was at its apex, burning brightly, like a torch held high in the sky. No stars could compete with the yellow orb, at least ones close to it; only in the distance were they able to be seen, and then they were faint, pulsing dimly.

It was by the luck of the moon and clear sky that Josiah and Scrap had been able to travel for so long into the night. Once they had found the trail of the rustled longhorns, there was no mistaking it. Josiah had some tracking experience and had learned, over the years, the signs to look for, but in this instance, Scrap had proven invaluable, and remarkably levelheaded.

Both men dismounted and tied their horses to a tall oak tree that stood all alone.

“This is makin' me nervous,” Scrap said in a low voice, trying to deflect any of the sound by lifting his hand up to his right cheek.

“Seems a little odd,” Josiah said, standing next to Scrap.

“Think it's a trap?”

“Could be, but what choice do we have? Wait them out if that's the case?”

“Wait until the sun breaks, maybe.”

“We could do that, but it's the men we're after. These cows aren't going anywhere fast.”

Scrap nodded. “I suppose you're right.”

“Why don't you circle around to the top of that outcropping, and I'll slide in as close as I can get to the camp and see what's going on. If there's no man on the perimeter, then maybe they were a small outfit, short on men.”

“You recognized that Mexican?”

“I did, but that doesn't mean anything.”

“It means I'm not gonna be in much of a mood to ask a lot of questions,” Scrap said.

Josiah cast the boy a glance and was about to tell him to keep a cool finger on the trigger, but he heard another coyote yip in the distance. Only this one didn't sound like the one that had alerted them to the dead calf, it sounded like a man trying to sound like a coyote, alerting somebody to Josiah and Scrap's presence.

Josiah and Scrap immediately split up. The swivel holster Josiah wore was unsnapped and at the ready. He carried his Winchester '73, fully loaded and ready to fire. A Bowie knife also rested on his hip, and his gun belt had a full complement of bullets. He was as ready as he could be for whatever was coming his way. No group of rustlers was going to give up a hundred head of longhorns without a fight. Josiah knew that better than anyone.

Scrap was just as ready with his collection of skills and weapons. As far as Josiah was concerned, there was no better long shot in all of Texas than Scrap Elliot. No man he'd encountered could outshoot the boy. There were always contests of some kind going on when the two of them had been in the Frontier Battalion camps. That seemed like such a long, long time ago. The assignment in Corpus Christi was the longest amount of time Josiah had spent anywhere since he'd joined the Rangers in the spring of 1874, just a year before.

The coyote had gone silent, and Josiah edged along a steady collection of rock, keeping the fire in sight. There had been no shadows. No movement. No sign of life around the fire. And that made Josiah nervous. He was almost certain that the second collection of yips he'd heard were man-made, not those of an actual coyote.

The cows were content, though, and that was something to be glad of. He could see them standing or settled down for the night all around the outcropping. The fire might have given them comfort, Josiah didn't know. But there didn't seem to be any nervousness about, anything that would suggest that the longhorns had been recently spooked.

Being as quiet as he could, Josiah managed to get close enough to the campfire to see for certain that no one was there. Scrap had not reached his spot on the outcropping to cover him, but that wasn't a concern . . . yet.

There was no gear, no sign of life, just a fire blazing away, like someone was getting ready to cook a good bit of beef . . . or send a signal. Certain now that the fire was a trap of some kind, Josiah edged back the way he had come, listening to everything outside of his own breath and heartbeat, trying to detect any kind of threat that he could.

The last thing he wanted to do was end up with a gun poked into his forehead, or get taken prisoner, or worse, die, recovering a small herd of cattle in the middle of nowhere.

He'd had enough threats—especially in the last few days, what with Miguel tricking him at Agusto's cantina, and Juan Carlos ordering him out of the fishing camp at gunpoint. If anybody was going to be at the end of a barrel, it wasn't going to be Josiah. Not this time.

Back near the spot where they'd left the horses, he began to climb up on the mantle of rocks that Scrap had scooted along to get his position.

He whistled before going on, and Scrap almost immediately whistled back. There was a quick two notes, a pause, then two more that meant everything was all right.

Satisfied that Scrap had reached the spot they'd agreed on, Josiah climbed upward, until he stood on the crest of the rock, looking over the fire and down to the herd of longhorns.