“I got boogers, too,” Ty said.
Chet frowned at him, and the younger one put his finger up his nose and then showed him the results.
“You sure do.” Chet jerked hard on the lead to settle Black down, then tied him high in a ring on the wall and went into the tack room for the packsaddle and pads.
“What’s that smell in here?” Ty asked, sniffing the rich odors.
“Saddle soap and neat’s-foot oil.” Chet stepped around them with his arms full of a cross-buck saddle and pads. He put blankets on and talked the whole time to settle Black down. Then he looked around for the boys. “Stay there, fellas, he’s still kinda wild.”
“May says we’re wild.”
“Hush up, Ty. Uncle Chet don’t need to know all that.”
Chet paused and frowned at them. “Maybe I do. What’s she been telling you boys?”
“Nothing.”
Ty gave his older brother a two-handed shove. “She did, too.”
“Aw, she was just in one of them crying moods. She never meant it, she told us later.”
“Did so. Said she wished the Co-manches would get us—we was so wild.”
Ray shook his head in disgust over his younger brother’s disclosure. “May’s got them two babies and that’s lots. Paw said we got to be nicer to her.”
“I’m glad you’re trying to be nice to her,” Chet said, untying the lead rope.
“Yeah, we don’t want her to get like Grandma,” Ray said.
“Yes,” Chet said, a little heartsick at the words coming from an eight-year-old. “Let’s go to the house.”
“Can we ride him?”
“Boys, I’d love that but he’s still pretty high. Might throw you.”
“We understand. Maybe you can find us a pony we can ride.”
“You wasn’t supposed to ask him for that.” Ty put his hands to his mouth over his older brother’s transgression.
“We won’t tell on him and I’ll look for a good one.” Chet hitched the black at the rack with the other horses in front of the yard gate. “We better get washed up. Looks like they’re eating without us.”
“Okay. Uncle Chet,” Ty said, and they hurried for the washbasins on the porch.
He waited for them to wash up. Susie appeared in the doorway and set an armload of bedrolls on the stone floor. She clapped her hands together. “May’s about got the foodstuff in the panniers.”
“Thanks, hate to leave the place in so few hands—”
“We’ll make it. I hope you can get the horses back.”
He nodded. They had to.
After the meal, Chet first made a quick check of all they were taking along. Coffee, jerky, beans, salt pork, lard, flour, saleratus, sugar, raisins, and dried apples. A small Dutch oven, coffeepot, and skillet, plus big spoons, spatula, tin cups, plates, silverware, and a few towels. Matches, some candles—three extra shirts. And plenty of hemp rope. He and Reg carried the panniers out and hung them on the packsaddle. Dale Allen threw on the bedrolls, and then he put the canvas tarp over it all.
Susie brought out the three .44/40 Winchesters and two boxes of shells. J.D. put the rifles in the saddle scabbards on each horse and the cartridges in Chet’s saddlebags.
“Tell Louise when she gets back from Mason, the boys’ve gone with me and we’ll be back in a couple of days,” Chet said to Susie. “Keep watch. No telling what’ll happen next.”
“Don’t let them filthy savages get you boys,” Theresa screeched from the doorway, and clawed the air like a cat with her arthritis-deformed hands. “They all should have been drowned as pups. My Gawd, I’d’ve held each one of them under the water myself.”
“Now Mother, get hold of yourself.” Susie guided her back inside. “They ain’t going after Comanches, just rustlers.”
“They took Cagle—they took my twins—”
Rock sat in the cane rocker and nodded his head. “If I was ten years younger—”
In the saddle, Chet looked down at Dale Allen. “Hold her together. We’ll be back shortly.”
“Watch out for them boys.”
“I will—you go fishing with yours.”
“Why?” Dale Allen blinked at him in astonishment.
“They need some fathering—since Nancy died you ain’t been much of one, I’m afraid.”
Dale Allen nodded in surrender. “They remind me too much of her, I guess. But I will.”
“See you all,” Chet said, and the three of them, leading the packhorse, rode out of the compound for the north pasture in a long trot.
“You ever go after rustlers before?” Reg asked Chet when they were beyond anyone hearing him.
“Several times.”
“You always get them?”
“Most.”
“Guess you hung them?”
Chet looked hard at the far ridge. “Yes, we hung ’em.”
“If it’s the Reynolds bunch, what’ll you do?” J.D. asked, pushing his horse in closer.
“A horse thief is a horse thief.”
“Even, like, if you know them?”
“Even then.”
“Gosh, I hope Susie was wrong…”
“Maybe she was, J.D., maybe she was.”
Over a fourth of the cavy was shod, so it wasn’t hard to pick out their tracks from where rustlers drove them out the wire-and-stake woven gate and headed ’em northwest. Chet pointed at the hoof marks, and they short-loped for a ways down the dim road.
Late afternoon, Chet spotted some smoke, and led the way off the trail to a place up in a canyon. A white man in his underwear top and pants came out of the jacal. He looked them over, then combed his too long hair back with his fingers and gave it a toss back.
“Gents, can I help you?”
“J.D., you look over them horses in the pen,” Chet said, and reined up the roan. “Evening, mister, we’re tracking some rustlers.”
“I sure ain’t one.” He made a frown like it was all a mistake.
Chet nodded, and looked for J.D. as the youth studied the stock. When the boy shook his head and started to ride back, Chet nodded again to the man. “Much obliged. Sorry to bother you.”
“How many did they get?”
“Over sixty head. Any of them with the bar-C brand on them will bring a reward my brother will pay if I ain’t back. I figure they’ll lose a few in their haste.”
“Thanks, I’ll be watching for ’em.”
“Sure,” Chet said, and turned Roan to leave. The boys leading Black joined him, and when they reached the road, Reg looked back. At last, he turned forward and frowned at Chet. “What’s he do for a living?”
“Eats our beef and lays up with that Mexican woman.”
Reg turned up his lip in disbelief. “You figure so?”
“Yes, and some day I’ll catch him red-handed at it.”
“Be kinda easy to live like that. I sorta