He was still pondering that enigma an hour later while he was out on the range looking for the red steer with the muddy blaze. The land rolled and dipped and he figured the old mossback might be grazing in a gully. His mind was jumping back and forth between searching for the missing beeve and thinking about Freddy Roark, so he didn’t immediately register what he was seeing when he rode up out of a twisting gully he’d been following.
Reining, he took off his hat and fanned his face, squinting into the distance. He made out three longhorns, all cows. And what looked like a naked man walking beside them. Curious, he rode forward, slowing when he came up on the longhorns, not wanting to scatter them. A glance revealed they weren’t branded and were free for the taking.
“Are these your beeves?” he asked the man, who stood with one hand on the back of a cow, looking up at him.
The wanderer was naked except for a pair of boots and a loincloth like the Indians still wore, and he was tanned deep brown by the sun. Gunshot wounds were distinctive, and this man had been shot a couple of times in the past. He had a few other scars and scabs and a ragged cut across his rib cage. Long brown hair curled on his shoulders, and a brown-and-grey beard reached to his chest. Expressionless, he glanced at the gun on Dal’s hip, then settled his gaze on the old Confederate shirt that Dal wore beneath his vest.
“What’s your name?” When the man didn’t answer, he asked, “Do you understand English?” Still no answer.
The situation was puzzling on several fronts. Now Dal noticed a pouch and a knife hanging from a thin rope around the man’s waist, indicating that he had the fixings to make a fire and skin whatever he could catch to eat. It was strange about the longhorns, too. Taming a longhorn was damned near impossible in Dal’s view, but the three cows seemed placid and content, not protesting the man’s presence or his touch. Clearly they traveled with the naked man, and he exhibited a definite proprietary air toward them. That was disappointing. Dal would have liked to pick up three extras.
He gave it another try. “That’s a nasty-looking cut. Do you need assistance?”
For all the reaction in the man’s expression and steady grey eyes, Dal might have been addressing his remarks to the cows. It didn’t much matter if the man was deaf or a foreigner who lacked English, the end result was the same. They weren’t communicating.
“That’s the King’s Walk herd over there,” he said anyway, jerking his head toward the dust cloud a couple of miles to the west. The boys were taking the beeves onto the bedding ground. “If you want to come in and share a meal, have that cut doctored, you’re welcome to share our fire.” At this point he didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one.
After casting a covetous glance at the three longhorn cows, he turned his horse into the sunset and rode toward the herd, keeping his eyes peeled for the old red with the muddy blaze. About a quarter mile from the bedding ground, he spotted the mossback heading toward the herd and cursed himself for wasting several hours. At least he hadn’t lost another one.
This was a good time of day. With the herd grazing peacefully, supper only minutes away, they’d covered eighteen miles, and he had the same number of beeves as he’d started with this morning. He was ready for a cup of thick scalding coffee, ready to let the day’s tensions drain out of his chest and shoulders.
When he heard hooves, he looked behind and saw the cows and the naked man loping across the range. Indians could run at that fluid pace, but Dal had never seen a white man who had the stamina for it. Interested, he watched the man run past him and guide his cows into the herd on the bedding ground. And he did something not many men would have done. He followed the cows in among the longhorned steers, which seemed a risky thing for a naked man to do. To Dal’s surprise, his presence didn’t spook the steers. He walked through the grazing cattle and was waiting on the west side when Dal circled the herd and rode up to him.
“Couldn’t resist the supper invitation?” Dal asked. The man didn’t answer, but clearly he understood English. Dal rode past him to the remuda and gave Grady the reins to the buckskin.
“Them cows he brought in could have the King’s Walk brand on them in about thirty minutes. We got irons in the wagon,” Grady commented after hearing the story.
“I don’t think he intends them as a gift.” Dal walked to the chuck wagon and beckoned the man forward. “I hope you have extra fixings,” he said to Alex. “We have a guest. I suspect he’s hungry and he needs a little doctoring.”
She looked up from the wreck pan and pushed a wave of blond hair off her forehead leaving a smear of soap suds. “He’s naked,” she said, gripping her crutch and averting her eyes.
Dal grinned. “He doesn’t talk much either. Hasn’t said a word so far.”
When he glanced over his shoulder, the man was standing at the edge of the light cast by the lanterns, staring at Alex as if reminding himself what a woman looked like.