Mail Order Victoria by Caroline Clemmons

Author:Caroline Clemmons [Clemmons, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Saturday morning at breakfast, Greg asked his foreman, “You said you’ve seen a pattern in the cut fence.”

Miguel shrugged. “I will show you where this happened yesterday and you can tell us what you think. Is your map so you can bring it with you?’

“Matter of fact, I have it folded and in my back pocket.” He looked at his wife. “We may be late for supper if we find a good lead. These rustlers have made me angry and I plan to see they’re caught.”

Kansas patted his stomach. “Sure was good food, Mrs. Hardy.”

Sonny grinned. “Best meal I’ve eaten since supper last night.”

Miguel smoothed his mustache. “Sí, your cooking is so good that soon we will be as fat as the swine in the sty. Oink, oink.”

She couldn’t suppress her laughter. “I’m glad you men enjoy my cooking. I appreciate your kind words. Should I prepare lunches for you to take with you?”

Greg was solemn but his blue eyes conveyed gratitude. “That would be nice. We’ll have our canteens with us. Jerky isn’t that tasty.”

“I’ll arrange for each of you to have a packet of food by the time your horses are saddled.”

Sure enough, by the time the men were ready to leave, she had four packages of food consisting of biscuits with ham slices inside, a slice of pie, an apple, and some cheese for them.

Greg and his men rode directly to where the fence had been cut when Sonny had checked yesterday. Greg dismounted and examined the ground.

“How many horses you count? I make out three.”

Kansas walked about twenty feet past Greg. “We found a fourth one waited here. Looks like he was supervising instead of herding. Never got off his horse.”

Greg marked the spot on his map and showed the men.

“You can see they always hit on this side, which makes me think they’re heading west. That means they’d have to cross Cibola Creek or the Guadalupe River otherwise. How far did you trail them yesterday?”

Sonny pointed at the map. “I lost the trail on the road here. There were too many prints and I couldn’t tell which were your cattle or someone else’s.”

Kansas leaned in. “They could be headed between the creek and river to a ranch. Someone may be using your cattle to stock a personal herd. Probably not far either because they keep coming back instead of hitting someone else.”

Miguel nodded. “This is true. I asked around and have not heard of anyone else losing cattle, have you?”

Greg folded his map and returned it to his back pocket. “No, I think this is aimed only at me. My wife said the same thing. I’m not the nicest person in Texas but I sure don’t know who I riled this much.”

He looked at his men. “You hear anything?”

Each shook his head.

“We’ll have to ride back until we get to a gate. This is something else I’ve wondered. Why cut the fence instead of using the gate that isn’t that far away? Who do they not want to see them with cattle?”

Miguel mulled over the question for a few minutes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.