“Well,” Rudabaugh vouchsafed at last, helping himself again to food at the fire, “they’ve only postponed things. So far, they’ve got two of us, and one of them Sam Barclay, my office deputy, and as good a man as I had.”
“Good on the books, maybe,” volunteered a voice, “but no good as a cowman. The Del Sol men rid it through and gathered, like enough, every cow except what landed on top of Sam. And they never dug a spade of dirt to cover him!” he added virtuously. “No way to treat a man. Why, them people is outlaws! And I’ll bet they’re crowing now over shooting Bentley!”
“They’re good cowmen,” commented Rudabaugh, after a long time. “We can’t take any chances with them, day or night. But I’ve got a few red friends between here and the Canadian that’ll help pickle their goose, I’m thinking. No white man yet ever scared a Comanche very bad, least of all old Yellow Hand, and I’ll bet he’s in the Nations right now. If we can find his band and show them four thousand beeves and two hundred picked horses I don’t think that herd’ll get much further north. Talk of a Cherokee outlet west to the buffalo lands—the Comanches’ll have something to say about a Texas outlet north! I think I’ll show something to our Del Sol friends.”
“You?” smiled a hearer. “Thought you said you’d kill the first Indian you saw north of the Red!”
“So I shall. I don’t throw a bluff and forget it. That’s only my private matter. I’m going to kill that Indian just as a matter of conscience.” He grinned.
“But before we move out of here,” he added, “we ought to get some word from our man McMasters. I’ve not seen hide or hair of him since he got run out of the Del Sol camp and came pretty near getting shot. He said he’d go on in alone and get the trunk out of the girl’s tent. Well, he didn’t. Anyhow he disappeared.”
“He’s always disappearing,” remarked another man. “He won’t work with us. I can’t line that fellow out.”
“Well, he told me he had to play both ends against the middle,” grumbled Rudabaugh. “But he ought to come in and report. I don’t mind a man being mysterious, but I don’t want him too damned mysterious. All I could do to trade with him, after that Ranger run-in on the Del Sol, before he moved north with the herd.”