Abilene Gun Down

CHAPTER 1 The western sky was a moil of gaudy colors, a smear of softly blazing crimson, mingled with smudges of violet and purple, streaked with dazzling, vibrant gold bleeding through spatters of yellow and orange, as if some mad painter had squeezed tubes of oil paint on a palette and then tried to wipe it clean with a scarlet cloth.The cattle, three hundred head of them, were strung out for a quarter of a mile or more under a faint pall of dust that seemed to follow them as if the grit were composed of lead filings and their backs were magnetized.The dust spooled out from behind the herd, coating Jed Brand with dust, the fine grains seeping through the faded blue bandanna covering his nose and mouth, clinging to the sweat stains under his arms and on the front of his sun bleached chambray shirt. He had choked on that stinging, blasting dust for fifteen mile or more because it was his turn that day to ride drag while his brother Dan rode point. Silas Colter, the bastard, held the flanks with his cutting horse, well out of the dust and heat generated by the cattle. Colter rode well out so he could see both sides and if a cow strayed, he could be there with his horse under him and drive the cow back into the herd.But by then, after weeks of being driven north, the herd was mite near trained. None of the longhorns strayed unless they were near water and hadn't drunk in a while, or if the leaders stirred up a sidewinder or two. Jed felt some pride about that. He and his brother had taken over as drovers in Waco after others had driven them up from deep in the Rio Grande Valley. That old mossy-horned cow in the lead, up there with Dan, had to break in two new drovers. She was as cranky as a Missouri mule until Jed and Dan had showed her who was boss. She kept wanting to turn around and head south, but now she had her wet nose to the wind and if she'd been bridled, she would have the bit in her teeth.Behind him, a mile or so maybe, there was a youngster bringing up the remuda, a Mexican boy named Julio Cardoza whom Colter had picked up at Jed's suggestion. Julio knew horses and loved them so much he slept with them. Dan was always kidding Julio about being half horse, but Julio never minded that. It was as if he were proud to be joked about in that way."I am half horse," Julio always said. "But you do not say which half, the front or the back.""Dan's the butt half," Jed told Julio.And Cardoza always laughed at that.He said he didn't really know how old he was, but thought he might have sixteen years. As he put it, "Creo que yo tengo diez y seis anos." Spanish is different than English. They say they have sixteen years. They have hunger. They have thirst. Jed spoke Spanish better than Dan did and he thought that was because he could think better in the language than his younger brother. It was a constant quarrel between them."What the hell do you want to speak Spanish for, Jed? You ain't no Mexican," Dan would say."Danny, you always think the Mexicans in Waco are talking about you behind your back. You always call what they say a lot of jabberin'. But if you understood their language, you'd know they weren't talking about you.""What are they talking about?""Girls," Jed would say. "And money.""Because they don't have neither.""That's right, Danny. And, neither do we."They would laugh after that, and the argument would be forgotten.Cardoza was an orphan. Colter hadn't wanted to hire him on, but Jed convinced him that they'd wear out horses on such a long drive, from Waco up to Abilene in Kansas, and they needed a remuda and Julio was the best horse wrangler around those parts. After a few days on the trail, Colter stopped his grumbling about having a boy doing a man's work. He and Julio didn't get along, but as Jed said, "Ain't nobody can get along with Colter. The man's got a mean streak in him a mile wide and two miles deSherman, Jory is the author of 'Abilene Gun Down', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743477000 and ISBN 0743477006.