Chapter 3
Young County, Texas, June 6, 1866
As a junior partner, Shamus O’Brien rode drag behind two thousand longhorns, a remuda of sixty horses, eighteen drovers and—
“What the hell does Charlie call that damned contraption, Colonel?” Luther Ironside said. He’d been eating dust for an hour and was even more cantankerous than usual.
O’Brien smiled under the bandana that covered his mouth. “A chuck wagon. And for heaven’s sake call me Shamus. We’re not in the army any more.”
“Damnedest thing I ever saw, Colonel,” Ironside said. For a few moments he considered the vagaries of Goodnight’s invention, then said, “It takes a score of oxen to haul the damned thing. He must’ve loaded up with a heap o’ grub.”
“We’ve got six hundred miles of hard country ahead of us before we reach Fort Sumner,” O’Brien said. “We’ll need all the grub we can carry and more.”
Ironside snorted. “Just wait until we hit the Staked Plains. Them drovers are gonna be too tired and too thirsty to eat.” He grinned like an undertaker. “Or too dead from a Comanche arrow.”
O’Brien had no illusions about what lay ahead. Texas longhorns never wanted to go anywhere. They preferred to stay right where they were, especially if grass and water were near, and that’s why they had to be driven. On a good day the herd would cover twelve to fifteen miles, but there would be few good days. The relentless sun would dry up waterholes and bring drought and dust and flies and dead beeves. Sudden thunderstorms would mill the cattle and cause stampedes across a hard, unforgiving land miles from anywhere.
It was enough to make a thinking man wonder what the hell he was doing out there in the first place.
Saraid, young Samuel on the seat beside her, was up ahead driving O’Brien’s Studebaker wagon and four-horse team. With her was a stowaway. Nellie, fearing retaliation from the Federals, hid in the back of the wagon and only revealed herself when there were fifteen miles of git between her and the settlement.
Ahead of Saraid rolled the chuck wagon. Goodnight and his partner Oliver Loving rode point.
Luther Ironside leaned over the side of his buckskin, spat, then rubbed off his mustache with the back of his hand. “How you figure Miz O’Brien and the younker are holding out, Colonel?”
O’Brien pulled down his bandana. “Just fine, I’m sure. Saraid is a strong woman. Why, back in the auld country she could plow a field as well as any man, and her only a slip of a girl.”
Ironside nodded, pleased. “Young Sam will hold up. He’s a quiet youngster, but he’s got sand.”
“He did all right back at the cabin,” O’Brien said. “He was scared, I could see that, but he held his ground.”
Ironside nodded. “He’ll make a fine cavalry officer when the South rises again.”
O’Brien replaced his bandana. Luther would never accept that the Confederacy had been beaten and beaten badly. It was an old argument between him and his former first sergeant, and one that O’Brien didn’t care to renew.
Luther Ironside was forty-seven that summer, his black hair shot with gray, not from age but from four years of war. He was a man of medium height, stocky and strong, and he still wore his yellow-striped cavalry breeches, tucked into mule-eared boots. A buckskin shirt and a battered gray kepi completed his attire. Around his waist he wore a heavy black belt with a CSA buckle and a Colt Navy butt forward in a holster of the same color.
He was tough, enduring and hard to kill. The new breed of Texas draw fighters who were making all the headlines in the eastern newspapers stepped wide around him and called him Mister Ironside.
O’Brien and Ironside rode drag for several weeks to the herd’s jumping-off place on the Concho. There the cattle rested on good grass, ready for the ninety-three-mile trek across the waterless Staked Plains.
They lost a hundred cattle to thirst and a dozen more to a band of Comanches who demanded tribute. Since the Indians were traveling with their women, children, old people and slaves, they showed little inclination to fight nearly two dozen men armed with Henry rifles, and rode south without further incident.
Saraid and Samuel stood up well to the rigors of the drive and the boy was riding ahead on the back of Goodnight’s saddle when the man caught his first glimpse of the Pecos.
When the herd reached Fort Sumner in mid-July, the army had eleven thousand Indians to feed, and beef was selling at a premium price, sixteen cents a pound dressed, eight on the hoof.
After paying his drovers, Charlie Goodnight realized a profit of twelve thousand dollars in gold. Shamus O’Brien’s share was ten percent, the return on the money he’d invested, laboriously saved during the war by Saraid, who had traded Confederate scrip for Yankee dollars at exorbitant rates.
It was enough, O’Brien decided.
In his pocket was the foundation on which a man could build a dream.