Red Trail by John Shirley & Ralph Compton

Author:John Shirley & Ralph Compton [Shirley, John & Compton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Forty-one days into the drive to Wichita.

The canyon opened up that morning, becoming several times wider and offering patches of graze for the herd. Mase and his drovers felt like a man with claustrophobia released from a locked room as they drove the herd into the broader trail. The red cliffs were still surrounding them but farther off, and it was possible to ride swing on the herd now. Bawling and mooing, hooves clattering and thumping, the herd moved on to the north.

But Mase had a fresh worry now. As he rode point, not far in front of the herd, he watched the hulking black rain clouds moving in from the northwest. He didn’t see any clear signs that there were flash floods in this canyon in the past, but it was raining a dickens of a lot this year. Mase wondered if he had taken too big a chance on the Red Trail. Maybe he was going to have to dig some graves soon for men who’d drowned, for men crushed by a panicky herd in a storm. At the same time, he was constantly scanning the cliff tops for signs of bushwhackers.

Mase kept remembering that boulder flying past, those boot tracks on the game trail leading up the cliffs. Had they been boot tracks? He hadn’t been certain. He remembered, too, the errant bullet that had skinned his hip the night the rustlers had struck. Had someone been trying to shoot him in the back?

And then he had Katie and Jim to think on. Were they safe? There had been that talk of Harning taking the ranch to court. Mase remembered Harning stopping him in the street one warm afternoon last year in Fuente Verde. The rancher had demanded to see the Durst Ranch deed.

Mase had stared at him in astonishment. “What put it into your mind that you’ve got the right to make that demand, Harning?” he’d asked.

“I’ve heard you’re homesteading without a deed, is what,” said Harning, scowling.

“The devil we are!” Mase told him. “You get a judge to tell me I’ve got to show you, and then I’ll do it.”

And Harning had indeed gone to court. Judge Murray, who was a lick too friendly with the big local landowners, had played along, and Mase had brought in the deed. Harning had scarcely looked at it. “Why, anyone could have cooked up that paper!”

“Looks legal to me,” Murray told him a little regretfully.

Harning had snorted and stomped out of the courtroom. . . .

Mase shook his head. What would such a man be putting Katie through with her all alone back home?

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