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  “Might’ve been a good idea, though,” Groot said. “Sell a few cattle. Army can pay top dollar. Give us some more money iffen we come ’cross some hard times. And the fewer mossyhorns we got, the less trouble we got. That’s how I think.” He punctuated his statement with a sharp nod.

  “Those Yanks at Concho got paid today,” Mathew said. “You think I’d let a bunch of drunken soldiers come into my camp? Hell, they’d stampede the whole herd halfway to Mexico.”

  * * *

  By morning they were moving, east and then north, and then in a gradual northeasterly course, slowly at first, taking advantage of the water, the green grass. Springtime brought color to this country, with the hardwoods on the mesas, the cottonwoods by the rivers, and the wildflowers. Bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes, Mexican hats, black-eyed Susans. Longhorns are not particular. They ate those, too.

  Texas’s Hill Country lay east and south, but this land was hilly enough. Across the Colorado River and on toward the town of Comanche. The trail was easy to follow. Other herds had followed the route, too. Other trail bosses must have decided to try the Chisholm Trail instead of the Western Trail to Dodge, or maybe they would find the railroad at Denison and ship out their cattle there. Mathew had considered Denison, but the price the railroad charged made it more profitable, more sensible, to keep on north for Kansas and its cheaper rates and better cattle prices.

  Every now and then, they would find reminders of the previous winters. White skeletons of cattle, even some horses, in sinkholes or creek bottoms or canebrakes or just alone in some rolling country, already scattered by buzzards, coyotes, wolves.

  Misting rains began west of Comanche and lasted four days. Barely hard enough for a rancher to even think of it as moisture, but it certainly soaked a man’s—or woman’s—clothing, and wet saddles could rub a cowpuncher’s backside raw. Yet it was more of the skies that fouled men’s moods, not the wet. Not cold. Not hot. Not even humid. But foggy and dank and dark.

  Mathew and Teeler Lacey rode alone into Comanche, the former to check for any telegraphs that might have been sent, for he had left word with Juan Quinta and Chico Miller that here he would be able to get any news or messages. Teeler Lacey rode a bay but led his black, his favorite horse, which had thrown a shoe. Comanche offered many things, including a good farrier.

  “Mathew Garth,” said Paul Ransom as Mathew and Lacey rode into the livery. “As I live and breathe.”

  “Brought you some business, Mr. Ransom.” Mathew dismounted, shook the gray-headed giant’s crushing hand, and nodded toward Lacey and the black.

  “You might as well get a whiskey, Teeler,” Mathew said after Ransom started work on shoeing the black.

  “You is human after all, ain’t you, Garth?” Lacey grinned.

  “Don’t get drunk.”

  Lacey laughed. “Spoke too soon. You ain’t human.”

  Although the town had not been incorporated until 1873, it had been around for many years. For a few short years right before the war broke out, Thomas Dunson would come all this way for supplies, for Ransom’s work with anvil, heat, and iron. Hell, he didn’t just shoe horses. He was practically the closest thing to a horse doctor in Texas.

  “I was thinking about Dunson just the other day,” Ransom said.

  “Oh.” Mathew rolled a smoke.

  The liveryman began telling the story of when Dunson had first brought Mathew to see Ransom. This was even before Comanche had been established back in ’58, back when Ransom ran a little horse ranch on Indian Creek and did a little side business with other ranchers in the area.

  “You asked Dunson—and I don’t reckon you was barely twenty then—why he come all this way . . . three hundred miles . . . to get a hoss shod.

  “And Dunson tells you that a hoss can mean life or death in this country, and that he planned on livin’ forever.”

  Mathew fired up the cigarette and flicked the match into the flames.

  “He did, you know?” Ransom said.

  Mathew cut short his drag, and smiled at the smithy. “I know that. I even remember it . . . I was there . . . and you’ve sure told that story enough.”

  “Ain’t what I meant, son. Meant that Dunson lived forever. He’s still around. I can see him in you. Specially now. You drivin’ a herd?”

  Mathew nodded.

  “Ain’t takin’ that new trail?”

  “And miss your company?”

  That made the old man give a wide smile. The hammer pounded the iron before the shoe returned to the flames.

  “What made you think of that story, Mr. Ransom?”

  “Oh . . . nothin’.” The smile was gone. Then so was the iron shoe, disappearing into a bucket with a loud hiss and a cloud of steam.

  “Had us a little ruction a few days ago. Deputy got hisself kilt.”

  Which wasn’t that uncommon in Comanche. John Wesley Hardin had killed a lawman here. That’s what had gotten the man-killer sent to Huntsville.

  Mathew sailed the cigarette, barely touched, into the fire. He guessed what the farrier would say even before the old-timer had turned around from the blazing fire.

  “I reckon you still remember a gunman named Jess Teveler.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The sheriff, Clarke Stamford, and his posse stopped in at camp that evening. Looking like the politician type, the lawman reminded Mathew—not in looks, but rather how he carried himself—of Chico Miller. Rumpled sack suit, bowler hat, not outfitted for a posse. As far as Mathew could tell, the sheriff didn’t even carry a short gun, just a single-shot rifle in the scabbard of his saddle. The posse didn’t look that much better. A few cowboys, maybe two or three town merchants, and one ex-Yankee sergeant, a big black man still wearing his army blouse, but duck trousers and a straw hat.

  Their clothes remained wet from the light rain that had finally stopped earlier that afternoon. Apparently, they had taken off after Teveler without thinking about rain slickers or india-rubber ponchos.

  “We’re lookin’ for a murderin’ scoundrel named Jess Teveler,” Sheriff Clarke Stamford said as he looked over the men lining up to be dished out supper by Groot and Joey Corinth. “Killed one of my deputies the other day. Killed a gambler in San Angelo, too, last winter.”

  * * *

  The details of the killing in Comanche had been given to Mathew by the farrier, Paul Ransom. According to witnesses, including Ransom, Jess Teveler had been sitting alone at a table in Galloway’s Grog Shop, sipping a porter and taking advantage of the free sandwiches and pickles that the saloon offered during the dinner hour. Nobody had really paid much attention to the stranger until Jace Karnes came in, ordered a beer, fixed himself a ham sandwich, and turned around.

  “You’re that Teveler fellow!”

  Karnes dropped the knife he was using to spread mustard over a healthy slice of rye bread and drew his Remington .44. “Killed a gambler in San Angelo.”

  Everyone in the saloon looked at the stranger. A few decided to leave at that moment, and others distanced themselves from Karnes and the stranger with the black hat and dark beer.

  “This ain’t San Angelo, is it?” Teveler sipped his beer, but only a few men noticed that he was drinking with his left hand, and that his right had disappeared underneath the table.

  Jace Karnes was thirty years old and had been begging for a deputy’s job for the past ten years. He had only gotten it after Clarke Stamford had been elected sheriff of Comanche County. Karnes had always bragged that if he had been a deputy back in 1877, the town of Comanche would be known for where John Wesley Hardin had been killed by Jace Karnes, and Deputy Charles Webb would still be breathing.

  “I reckon it’ll be me, Jace Karnes, that collects the reward they’ve posted on you in San Angelo,” Karnes said.

  Some folks said Teveler sang out, “It’ll be somethin’ else you collect, bud!” But Ransom had told Mathew that Teveler said nothing.

  His right hand came up, and the double-action revolver he held bark
ed. Gun smoke filled the saloon. The doors to Galloway’s Grog Shop pounded, and Jess Teveler was galloping out of town before most people understood what had happened.

  The deputy had his pistol out, but not cocked. He bled out with three bullets in his stomach before his wife could reach the saloon, where Ransom and others had put him on a table and sent for the doctor.

  “Ain’t the reputation a town like Comanche would care to have,” Ransom had told Mathew. “Place where outlaws gun down sheriff’s deputies.”

  * * *

  “You expect him to light a shuck with a trail herd?” Mathew told Sheriff Clarke Stamford. Mathew felt thankful that Tom and Lightning were riding around the herd.

  “Well . . .” Paying little attention to Mathew, the sheriff carefully studied the men in line for supper.

  “Maybe not . . .” It was the old army sergeant who spoke now. “But he might’ve stopped in for some grub or a whiskey.”

  Mathew reexamined the black man. He had shaved his head, but wore a gray-flecked mustache and goatee. He set deep in the saddle, relaxed, his one hand on the reins, the other not too far from the holstered gun in a green sash that also held a sheathed D ring bowie knife. This man, Mathew determined, was the real leader of the posse. He was better than the rest of the lot combined. Hell, he even had a slicker strapped to the back of his saddle along with his bedroll.

  “Grub maybe,” Mathew said. “Coffee for sure. But no whiskey. Whiskey on a trail drive is a bad investment.”

  “Bad investment most times, ain’t it?” The old soldier showed straight but yellow teeth as he smiled.

  “I never turn a man away from coffee or food,” Mathew said. “You’re welcome to some.”

  The sheriff turned in the saddle. “This all the men you got?”

  “Three men are circling the herd,” Mathew said. “Two of them are my sons. The other’s Joe Nambel, and I’ve known him since I was a kid. They aren’t the man you’re looking for.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. Let’s go check those—”

  “One of you may go.” Mathew shifted the cup to his left hand, while his right gripped the Colt’s butt. “Only one.” He felt every man in his crew moving closer to the weapons they carried.

  The sheriff swallowed as his face paled.

  “Those beeves are wet, irritated, and just a little spooked from the rain and fog and gloom. I’m not risking you stampeding them eight ways from Sunday. If you don’t take my word that the man you’re looking for isn’t riding herd on those cattle, that’s fine. But all of you aren’t going out there. Not this evening.”

  “That killer . . .” the sheriff began. “You sure he ain’t been here?”

  Mathew took his hand off the Colt and smiled, shaking his head, returning the coffee cup to his right hand, and took a sip. “Sheriff, you haven’t even told me what this gent looked like.”

  “Tall, lean. Older. Maybe my age or so. Black hat. Fine spurs. Put three slugs in Jace Karnes’s belly from his .41 caliber Thunderer. Jace was a good man. Didn’t have no call to shoot him a-tall, exceptin’ that Jace recognized him from that poster the marshal at San Angelo sent out. That’s how we know his name is Jess Teveler. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

  “I’ve heard the name,” Mathew said.

  “Well . . . ?” The sheriff swallowed.

  Mathew shrugged. “Black hat. Older man. I reckon we could have given him some coffee some days back.”

  The way Mathew saw things, he wasn’t exactly lying to the law. Just not saying everything, and he had his reasons. For one, had he told the sheriff that Teveler had stopped in camp near San Angelo, maybe even if he said he knew Jess Teveler, the sheriff would have wired telegraphs across the state. And then Mathew would be getting visits from every lawman from here to the Red River—just in case that Teveler, for some reason that only a lawman or bounty hunter could fathom, might drop in for more biscuits, beans, and coffee.

  “All right.”

  “You want some coffee, Sheriff?” Mathew asked.

  “What I want is to see my wife and brand-spankin’-new grandbaby. Get out of these wet duds. We done missed poor Jace’s buryin’ and all. Lost Teveler’s trail round Sowells Creek. No luck pickin’ it up agin.” He shifted in the saddle. “You sure them men with your cows ain’t Teveler.”

  “He said they wasn’t,” the black man said. “I trust’m.”

  “We got plenty of food and grub, Sheriff,” Mathew said. “You’re welcome to some.”

  “No thanks.” He sighed. “I sure hate tellin’ Dorothy Karnes that we didn’t get that dog that killed her husband. Let’s ride, boys.”

  Mathew cleared his throat. “Go easy around the longhorns, gents. You don’t want to get caught in a stampede.”

  * * *

  The rains stopped. The skies cleared. The sun baked the land. The drive continued north and east, but the Red River seemed to be a million miles away.

  On they went, across the Leon River with little difficulty. They dodged around barbed-wire fences—once unheard of in the state of Texas—where sodbusters had fenced off their fields. Mathew could not blame the farmers, and he wanted no run-ins with any homesteading family, or the law.

  They paralleled rivers, creeks, branches, maybe even ditches. They crossed them when they could, sometimes two or three times. Some had names—the Bosque . . . Hannibal Creek . . . Palo Pinto . . . Cane Branch . . . Honey Creek . . . Eagle Creek . . . Mill Branch. Most did not.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Mathew,” Laredo Downs called out as he walked his horse up a knoll, generously named Warters Mountain, where Mathew sat on the dun, watching the dust. “Fort Griffin’s just over yonder way. Still ain’t too late to change your mind and pick up the Western Trail.” He smiled good-naturedly and offered Mathew the cigarette he had just rolled.

  Mathew took the smoke, but pointed it in another direction before he stuck it between his lips. “I like . . . that way.”

  Laredo laughed. He nudged his horse closer, and this time lost the smile as his voice lowered.

  “You know we’re bein’ followed.”

  “For some time now,” Mathew said. He did not look over his shoulder where Laredo stared.

  The old foreman rubbed his neck. “I’d thought we was bein’ followed . . . pret’ much since Comanche. Then I laughed at my silly notion. I mean . . . it wasn’t like it was back when . . .” He stopped quickly.

  “When we all knew Dunson was behind us,” Mathew said.

  “Well.” Laredo tried another smile, but it didn’t last long. “Well, it ain’t Dunson.”

  “It ain’t Jess Teveler, either.” Mathew struck the match he had fished out from his vest pocket, cupped his hands, and lighted the cigarette.

  “How can you tell?”

  “He’s showing himself. Been off there for the past three days.”

  “Three days!” Laredo took off his hat to wipe his brow. “Three? Damn, I must be gettin’ old.”

  “You’re paid to move the herd. Not look behind you. And he’s no threat.”

  “Well, he’s white. At least.” The hat returned to the foreman’s head.

  “You sure?” Mathew blew out smoke.

  “He ain’t no Comanch’, I mean.”

  “Probably not.”

  “What do we do?”

  Mathew shrugged. “Free country. Let him ride. He’ll probably stop in for a visit sometime.”

  He kicked the horse and rode down the rise, with Laredo at his side.

  They reached the Brazos River. Roughly four hundred miles from the ranch along the Rio Grande. Four hundred miles, forty-four days. One man dead. Maybe twenty head of longhorns lost along the way. A few had drowned. Others just dropped dead along the trail, worn out. Maybe a couple had drifted off unnoticed to be butchered by some grateful sodbuster or road-branded by another drover or rancher who figured that a lost steer was just the same as the spoils of war.

  They did not cross the Brazos immediately, however. In
stead, they followed it, more or less, on its eastward course, avoiding some of the bends to save time and take advantage of an easier ford near what remained of Fort Belknap.

  There, they crossed the river with relative ease and bedded down the herd and remuda near the fort. It had been established back around 1851, abandoned by the bluebellies with the war broke out, then reoccupied a few years after the war. When Fort Griffin had been established just a few short months later, though, Fort Belknap had been abandoned. Nearby settlers had stripped the buildings of just about anything they could use, but the well remained, and the water from it tasted sweet, not brackish.

  They rested one day, to let the cattle and horses graze and regain some strength. Soon, they would pick up the main branch of the Great Texas Cattle Trail—the Chisholm Trail—and head north to the Red River, into Indian Territory, and then cut west for Kansas, Dodge City, and, with luck, a waiting cattle buyer with a satchel full of greenbacks.

  Four hundred miles behind them. Another four hundred—a much harsher four hundred—to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Don’t like the look of that, no, sir,” Groot said, snorted, and spit.

  Lightning, still half-asleep despite his third cup of coffee, looked off to the east.

  “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight,” John Meeker said. “Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.” The drunk shook his head and gave a little, wan smile. “My pa used to say that all the time.”

  “From the Gospel of Matthew,” Bradley Rush said.

  “What’s it mean?” Lightning heard himself ask.

  “Rotten weather,” Groot said. “For sure.”

  Lightning snorted. “Who cares what a sheepherder says about weather.”

  “It ain’t just the sky this morn’,” Groot began. “Last night, I seen some ants scurryin’ ’bout, pickin’ up the good grub you boys spilt, y’all was so hungry. Ants. Late at night. And my ma always told me that if you saw ants workin’ late, then snow or rain was a-comin’, sure as shootin’.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about snow, Groot,” Joe Nambel said.