Goodnight's Dream (A Floating Outfit Western Book 4) (15 page)

‘
Three thousand head’d take maybe
thirty men—’ Dusty went on.

‘
That’s something else,’ Goodnight
interrupted. ‘I figure that we’re using too many men on the drives.
Once the herd settles in to the trail, eighteen hands at most would
be enough.’

‘
Eighteen!’
Dusty repeated.

‘
Eighteen, riding point,
swing and drag,’ Goodnight insisted. ‘I found that out on the last
drive. Nine men could handle the fifteen hundred head better than
the full crew; they could see what was happening and didn’t get in
each other’s way like when the full bunch were there. Eighteen
trail hands, a cook, his louse, one to three men handling
the
remuda
and a scout. If it can be done with just them, making a
drive to Kansas’ll pay enough to be worth making.’

‘
So that’s why you sent for us,’ Mark
breathed. ‘To help you do it.’

‘
To see if handling three thousand head
can be done,’ the rancher corrected. ‘We’ll be taking along three
thousand head, but to Fort Sumner, not Kansas this time.’ He
paused, scanning the faces before him and reading an unspoken
question on them. ‘If I’m so sure we can make it to Kansas, why am
I headed for Fort Sumner?’

‘
The notion did sort of cross my mind,’
Mark admitted.

‘
And you’ve already given the answer.
Nobody’s tried to handle a herd of three thousand. So I figure it’d
be best if we made the first one over a trail I know real well,
with good food and water all the way and a certain market at the
other end.’

‘
So there might not be a market in
Kansas?’ Dawn asked, disappointment plain in her voice.

‘
There’s always that chance,’ Goodnight
told her, ‘although I’m sure the market’s there. However, the cost
of financing such a drive will be heavy. That’s why I’m staking
everything I’ve got on this big drive to Sumner. I’m bonded for
every nickel I own to deliver three thousand head to the Fort
before July—at eight cents a pound, on the hoof.’

‘
Eight
cents a pound, on the hoof!’ Dawn croaked and even
the impassive features of the Ysabel Kid registered emotion. ‘Why
that’s … that’s—’

Words failed Dawn as she tried
to make an estimate of just
how much money the completion of the contract
would bring to Goodnight. Although a slow developer and not
considered mature until over four years old, an average steer
beyond that age weighed around eight hundred pounds on the hoof.
Growth continued and, from ten years until senile decline set in, a
steer could go up to one thousand pounds, or in exceptional cases
as high as sixteen hundred. Knowing that, Dawn’s mind boggled at
the thought of what a herd of three thousand head would be worth
when delivered to Fort Sumner. One eight-hundred-pound steer would
fetch sixty-four dollars and, in a herd that size, there would be
many weighing far heavier.

‘
That’s real important money,’ Dusty
finished for her, having followed much the same line of
thought.

‘
More than enough to
finance a drive to Kansas,’ Goodnight agreed. ‘But
only
if
I
can fulfill the contract.’

‘
Which you can’t without that eleven
hundred head Chisum was supposed to bring,’ Mark
guessed.

‘
That’s about the size of it,’ the
rancher agreed.

‘
Damn it!’ Dawn spat out. ‘I wish I’d
never come after them damned critters!’

‘
Don’t feel that way, I’m not blaming
you,’ Goodnight smiled. ‘They were your cattle and you’d every
right to get them back.’

‘
And you’ve likely saved Uncle Charlie
a mess of trouble,’ Dusty continued. ‘If he’d not found out in
time, those cattle would’ve been mixed with his herd. I don’t
reckon the Army’d’ve too high regard for his honesty if he’d showed
up with maybe one in three head carrying somebody else’s brand and
him not able to prove how he came by them.’

‘
Even if the Army took them, word’d get
out,’ Mark went on. ‘Folks’d call Colonel Charlie a thief. No
rancher takes kind to being stolen from and they’d like it a whole
heap less when they learned how much he was paid for their
stock.’

‘
My contract calls for straight
brands,’ Goodnight said quietly. ‘The Army would cancel if they
were faced with a herd of stolen stock.’

‘
Only you’d’ve found out
about the brands before you arrived,’ Dusty pointed out. ‘Even if
Chisum’d’ve mixed them in with your herd, you’d’ve seen some of the
brands when you
trail counted, or looked the cattle over. But by
that time, it’d be too late for you to replace them.’

‘
How bad off does losing that bunch of
Chisum’s leave you, Colonel?’ Mark asked bluntly.

‘
Bad enough. He’s always played
straight with me before, so I only gathered around two thousand
head of my own. Figured to have my boys building up a herd for
Kansas while I was away and making the drive with Chisum’s
hands.’

‘
Can’t you round up enough to fill the
contract?’ Dusty inquired.

‘
Not in time. This part of the year,
most of the cattle’ve moved back into the brush-country and’re
harder to move out than borrowing neighbors. Even if we got them,
I’ve only three men without stripping the spread of its work
crew.’

‘
When Cousin Red and Billy Jack come,
we make it up to seven even with Lon riding scout,’ Dusty
said.

‘
Which still leaves us eleven trail
hands short,’ Goodnight reminded him. ‘A herd of three thousand
couldn’t be handled with less than eighteen men.’

Much as Dawn wanted to speak, she found
herself unable to utter the words that crowded her mouth ready to
be uttered. Then she found Dusty’s gray eyes on her and a thrill of
anticipation ran through her as she guessed what he had in
mind.

‘
I reckon getting the cattle’d be easy
enough, Uncle Charlie,’ Dusty remarked. ‘If Dawn’s pappy and their
neighbors can bring in a thousand head, that’ll give you the full
herd to fill the contract.’

‘
There’s the hundred Chisum wide-looped
from us for starters,’ Dawn agreed eagerly. ‘And most everybody
around us’ve been gathering for when the hide-and-tallow man comes.
They’d sooner sell to the Army—’

Her words trailed off as she realized that
her father and their neighbors would not be selling to the Army. It
seemed highly unlikely that Goodnight would pay eight cents a pound
and then drive the cattle to Fort Sumner and only get the same
price for them.

‘
Maybe Dawn could help you get the
hands while she’s at it,’ Dusty remarked, guessing what was on the
girl’s mind.

‘
We’ve three
of
’em
back home, doing nothing but sit on
their butt ends most of the
time,’ Dawn admitted. ‘Trouble being none of ’em’s ever been on a
long drive.’

‘
Neither have Dusty and the OD
Connected boys,’ Goodnight answered. ‘That’s why they’re coming
along. Maybe your pappy and some of his neighbors would like to
send hands to drive the cattle and learn how it’s done.’

‘
They’ll be green hands,’ Mark
said.

‘
And so will the crews
that go north to Kansas,’ Goodnight replied. ‘So if it comes off,
this’ll be more than just a trail drive. You know that we’ve no
industries in Texas capable of competing on a national level and no
mineral resources to bring money into the State.
^xvii
All we’ve got is cattle. But we’ve
got more of them than any other state or territory in this whole
country. And we’ve got the grazing land to keep on raising them.
But not if we have to sell out breeding stock and strip the ranges
bare for the hide-and-tallow factories. If we can get to Kansas,
we’ll have a market for beef and won’t need to sell bulls or cows
at three dollars a head. Dawn, boys, if we can show that it’s
possible to trail a big herd, we’ll help haul this old State of
our’n up by its boot-straps and set it back on its
feet.’

Then the rancher coughed and his face resumed
its usual grim, unemotional lines. He studied the four young faces
and saw no derision to his rhetoric. Instead they glowed with
enthusiasm.

‘
You mean you’ll take some of our boys
along just so they can learn how it’s done?’ Dawn asked.

‘
I will,’ Goodnight agreed. ‘Then
they’ll be able to teach others and the money the cattle bring will
help finance your drives north.’

If Dawn had felt admiration for Goodnight
before, it increased in leaps and bounds at his words. Instead of
taking advantage of his neighbors, buying their stock cheap and
taking it to sell at a vast profit, he was offering to share his
good fortune with them. More than that, he appeared willing to let
some of them go along to learn the trail and how to handle a large
bunch of cattle.

Dusty felt no such surprise at his uncle’s
generosity. Money meant little to a man like Charles Goodnight. His
main aim was to set Texas back on its feet, to find a way to
rebuild the war-ruined economy of the State. Cattle offered him
that way, so he was willing to throw his experience to the benefit
of his neighbors. Once other ranchers saw the trailing of large
herds was possible, they could be counted on to make the attempt.
Using the countless herds of longhorns that roamed practically
unchecked over the Texas ranges, the ranchers would bring badly
needed money into the State. Then there could be development,
growth, expansion. That was Goodnight’s dream. Dusty and the
floating outfit had been sent by die Devil Hardin to help Goodnight
make his dream come true.

‘
Remember,
Miss
Dawn,’ Goodnight told the girl as she sat on her
bayo-tigre
gelding ready to
start the journey home. ‘The men your pappy and neighbors pick to
come must be here with the cattle in eight days at
most.’

‘
We’ll be here,’ the girl promised.
‘Eleven hundred head, all steers.’

‘
That’s it,’ the rancher agreed. ‘They
travel faster than a mixed herd and steers’re what the Army
want.’

‘
I’ll mind it all,’ she
promised.

‘
Watching the girl’s eager face,
Goodnight hoped that she was not raising her hopes too high and was
doomed for disappointment. A pioneer at the business of
long-distance cattle herding, he knew the risks involved and the
problems it presented. Even with a smaller herd and trained crew,
reaching Fort Sumner was anything but a sinecure. Taking along
fifteen men—skilled as they might be at general ranch work—who had
never been on an extended journey of that kind multiplied the odds
against getting the steers through.

Yet the try must be made and the experience
gained by the cowhands would be invaluable on later drives. Given
the cooperation of Sutherland and his neighbors, the drive might
come off and pave the way for the rest of Goodnight’s dream to
become a reality.

It was dawn and, despite sitting up late
discussing the scheme, the girl was ready to ride home. Mark and
the Kid, the former authorized to act as Goodnight’s spokesman,
were to accompany her. Riding relay, they hoped to make very fast
time to her home and make an early start at gathering the cattle.
The steers retrieved from Chisum were to be added to Goodnight’s
shipping herd, for Dawn knew her father would leap at the chance
offered by the bearded rancher.

After seeing his friends leave with Dawn,
Dusty waited at the Swinging G house for Goodnight to complete some
work. Then they collected their horses from the stables.

Two hours later, Dusty sat at the side of a
small lake. With his left leg hooked up comfortably over the horn
of his paint stallion’s saddle, he looked around with interest.
Scattered before him were numerous specimens of the creature upon
which the future of Texas depended. They were two thousand head of
longhorn steers gathered and held together by Goodnight’s men.
Surrounded by plentiful grazing, protected from visitations by
predatory animals, with good water close at hand, the steers showed
a little inclination to roam. Of course the arrival of the D4S
cattle—brought from the vicinity of the ranch house by the men
coming to handle the herd during the day—could be expected to make
the Swinging G stock restless. Yet Dusty could see little sign of
it so far.

Although every bit as much
creatures of a herd as American bison, prairie-dogs or pronghorn
antelope, the longhorns did not show the other species’ uniformity
of coloration. Steers of almost every imaginable animal color
dotted the land before Dusty. Brindles, duns, dark, washed-out or
Jersey creams, bays, browns, reds, blacks, whites, mulberry,
ring-streaked or speckled blues,
grullas
the mousey brown shade of sandhill
cranes,
golondrinos,
and mixtures of colors almost beyond number or
belief. All in all, they made a gaudy picture and it seemed strange
that such creatures might be the salvation of a great
State.

‘
That’s a fine gather you’ve made,
Uncle Charlie,’ Dusty commented, turning to where his uncle sat by
his side.