“Your horse came back to the remuda, and one of the Webster boys brought in Freddy’s mare,” Grady said, coming up to him. Grady grinned at Dan’s efforts to cover his privates, then he slid a look toward Dal, jerked his head toward the remuda, and walked away.
Dal followed, ready to choose a fresh mount and ride out to help the drovers untangle the mill. There was no need to explain to Grady how he and Freddy had lost their horses. The only thing unusual about a rider getting tossed during a wild ride in the darkness was that neither of them had brought back an injury to anything but their pride. “I’ll take the roan,” he said.
Grady nodded, but he didn’t walk into the herd of horses right away. “What do you know about that Caldwell fella?” he asked, biting off a chunk of tobacco and tucking it inside his cheek.
“Enough not to trust him. Why?”
“See that red mustang over there? Got hooked in the first stampede, and she’s not healing up like I want her to. Anyways, I was up tending to her right before that old piebald steer jumped up and started running toward Sunday, you know the one I mean.”
“Keep talking,” Dal said, frowning.
“Just before all hell broke loose, I thought I seen Caldwell walking toward the bedding ground. He’d circled around the camp and was far enough out that I woulda missed him if we hadn’t had a moon tonight and if I hadn’t just happened to look that way when I did.”
Grady spit a stream of juice on the ground, then walked into the herd of horses to fetch the roan, leaving Dal to think about the implications of Caldwell approaching the bedding ground. All it would take to start a stampede would be one loud noise. Or a rock thrown at one of the steers. Stampedes would start for a dozen reasons, but they didn’t start for no reason.
The same thought crossed his mind again in the morning when he discovered the result of the stampede was one steer dead and two missing.
“Hell, Dal, we’ve checked every ditch and gully for three miles in every direction,” Drinkwater reported, eating his breakfast while he talked. “You want my opinion, those two missing steers probably joined up with the herd right behind us.” He forked some boiled potatoes into his mouth. “You want me and Peach to ride over and check?”
“No,” he said reluctantly. He’d lose two drovers for a full day, it would disrupt the other trail boss’s operation, and the King’s Walk steers might not even be there.
He looked toward the three men sitting around the observers’ campfire, his gaze steadying on Jack Caldwell. Stampedes were easy to start, and costly. Steers got lost, men got tired or injured, the outfit suffered. But stampedes were a fact of life on any cattle drive. A bright moon or a drop of rain could start a stampede. An unusual odor or an unfamiliar sound. Because Caldwell had taken a midnight stroll could mean something, or it could mean nothing.
Much as he would have liked to throw him off the drive, he had no proof that Caldwell had done a damned thing except gloat over the lost steers.
He tossed back the last drops in his coffee cup. “Get the drovers moving,” he said to Drinkwater. “And keep the pace up. I want those beeves so tired tonight that they can’t move.”
“Is it true you were seeing Jack Caldwell?” Alex asked curiously, as Freddy brought her breakfast plate to the wreck pan.
Freddy sent a silent curse winging toward the observer’s camp. “What of it?”
Alex wiped a rag over a plate and sat it aside to dry in the morning sun. “A gambler, Freddy?” Her eyebrows rose and she rolled her eyes. “How could you?”
“Well pardon me if I’ve tarnished the family honor once again. Pardon me for being lonely. Pardon me for keeping company with a no-account gambling man instead of one of the hundreds of respectable men who were beating a path to my door.”
Angry, she slammed her empty coffee cup down on the chuck wagon worktable hard enough to rattle the stack of clean dishes. Hard enough that the table’s support leg shook and disturbed Alex’s precarious balance. Her hands flew out of the wreck pan’s dishwater and she grabbed for her crutch, but not in time. She fell sprawling to the ground.
Before Freddy recovered from the shock of it, Charlie stepped over Alex, dropped his plate and cup in the wreck pan, and started toward the remuda to choose his horse for the day.
“How can you just step over her?” Freddy demanded, horrified and furious.
“Huh?” Charlie looked back, then down at Alex, who was struggling to reach her crutch. “She ain’t hurt, is she?” He peered at her. “Naw.” And continued on his way.
“I’ll help you,” Freddy said, rushing to her sister.
“Just get out of the way.” Shoving down her skirts, Alex lifted to her knees, then gripped the crutch and pulled herself up.
“I’m sorry, Alex. Honestly. I wasn’t thinking about you balancing against the table.”
“Of course not,” Alex snapped. “But falling down is nothing new, it happens several times a day.” Pink blazed on her cheeks, and she was angry.