The Rawhiders by James Walker

Author:James Walker [Walker, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441261939
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Barb stood alone at the edge of the evening campfire, her face against the wind. She bowed her head and shook it.

Randolph walked up behind her with a plate of hot food. “Barbara, you’d better eat something.”

She kept her back to him. “I’m not hungry.” She looked up at the dying twilight. “How could he do something like that? Kidnapping! Taking a mere boy away from his father, and now I’m a party to it.” Her shoulders shook, but it had little to do with the cool wind.

“Here, Barb, eat your beans. You’ll think better with something hot in you.”

“There’s nothing to think about. I’ve got to take that boy back in the morning and offer my apologies. After all, a man has a right to keep his own cattle. We’re driving the Circle R stock to market, not every cow we can pick up along the way.”

“We did start out with almost four thousand head, and I’d put us over that now. Part of it is how late in the season we are. Every herd that comes through here loses steers. They’re like anything else when they’re lost. They seek out the company of their own. I don’t know how many XL cows we have, maybe a hundred or better.”

“It just doesn’t make sense. All the fuss for so few.” She turned around to Randolph and took the plate.

“I don’t think the number of cows has anything to do with it. The problem is between you and Hammond—it has nothing to do with the XL. The way I see it, he doesn’t want anybody to tell him what to do. He wants to show any and all that he’s the boss.”

“Why are men like that? Like a pack of dogs, having to show off who’s stronger, who has the biggest bite. I don’t think I’ll ever understand them as long as I live.”

Randolph dropped his head. “We’re not all like that. Don’t think that anything I did the other night had anything to do with my pride. If ego was what prodded me in life, I’d be practicing law in Philadelphia.”

“Oh, I don’t think pride entered into your thinking at all, Lance. I know why you did what you did, and I appreciate it. I don’t think arrogance motivates you. You have a great deal of self-respect, and I admire that in a man.”

“Thank you.”

Barb ate a spoonful of beans. “I do think I’m going to have to remedy the problem with Pete Hammond.”

“You better take care, Barb. If he leaves us, he’ll take Macrae and Yanni with him, maybe Crossy too. With those three hombres that have been shadowing us, they just might be able to take the herd. I’ll back you, of course, along with Earl. I think Greener will throw in with us, and I don’t have any doubts about the three with the remuda. But it’s gonna make us real shorthanded with this many cattle to move, and those six or seven would be doggin’ us all the way to Dodge City.

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