This Calder Range by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online

to be left tied to a tree for a few days until they were tender-headed enough to lead. In extreme cases, the eyelids of outlaw cattle were sewed shut so they would blindly follow another animal to avoid treacherous branches.
    With the reluctant cow in tow, Benteen turned the dun gelding in the direction of the main camp, where they penned their catch. He didn’t wait for Shorty. The young cowboy was on his own. It wasn’t uncommon for brush riders not to make it back to camp before night fell, in which case they bedded down wherever they happened to be.
    Shorty caught up with him, though, about a mile before Benteen reached camp. Both horse and rider bore the marks of pursuit. There was a gash on the right wither of the bay horse where a horn had slashed through its hide. Like Benteen’s mount, the horse’s legs were scratched and studded with dislodged thorns. Shorty was sporting a long cut on his cheek, the blood from it starting to dry and cake.
    â€œI had to leave mine back there necked to a tree,” he told him, grinning widely. “I’ll go get her in a couple of days.”
    Benteen nodded and glanced at the broken pieces of branches sticking out of the fork of Shorty’s saddle. “You’ve got enough wood there to start a small fire.”
    â€œReckon I do.” Shorty laughed and began pulling it out.
    By the time they reached camp, the yellow light of dusk was filtering over the brushland. Jessie Trumbo already had a cook fire going. Steaks from a steer they’d butchered the day before were frying in a skillet. The coffee had already boiled, and the pot was sitting near the warming edge of the coals. When he sawBenteen leading in the maverick cow, Jessie stuck a branding iron in the fire.
    In front of a mesquite-pole pen, Shorty roped the hind legs of the animal. With Benteen at the head and Shorty stretching out the tail, they put the cow on the ground, flankside-up. The glowing iron was curved in the shape of a C. Jessie stamped it three times onto the cow’s hide, burning through the hair into the hide just deep enough to leave a permanent scar that read Triple C.
    In Jessie’s absence, another cowboy named Ely Stanton took over the cooking chores. In a cow camp, everyone pitched in to do whatever tasks needed to be done, without complaint. Counting Benteen, there were five riders working out of the camp. Four more, Andy Young and Woolie Willis and two others, were holding a herd of twelve hundred captured cattle on the prairie. There was a sizable bunch in the pen, enough to be driven out to the herd.
    After the cow was branded, Benteen turned it loose in the pen and unsaddled the dun gelding. Before turning it out with the cavvy, he extracted the thorns from its legs and treated cuts that needed attention.
    Night was thickening the sky when he finally joined the other riders at the campfire. Bruised and battered from the day’s work, he paused wearily to pour a cup of pitch-black coffee, then settled cross-legged on the ground. After three grueling months, it was almost over. He had a good-sized herd of mixed cattle carrying his brand. With the eleven hundred dollars he’d managed to accumulate these last three years from a combination of trail-boss wages and money from the sale of maverick cattle that he’d roped, branded, and driven north with the Ten Bar herds, he’d have enough to buy a remuda, a couple of wagons, and trail supplies. At Dodge City he could sell off some of the prime steers and get enough money to pay the drovers’ wages and have a good chunk left to carry him through the first lean years—if he was lucky.
    His glance swept the faces of the other men around the fire. “Anybody seen Spanish today?”
    The half-breed Mexican cowboy had been absent for three nights, but Spanish had practically been reared in the brush. He knew all its secrets. Of all the riders, Benteen was least concerned by the prolonged absence