Rose(98)

Simply put, Rose embodied everything he needed to be happy. How could he even consider giving her up?

He couldn’t. He hadn’t.

But what about Rose? Wasn’t it possible she would be better off with someone else? It wasn’t fair to deprive her of the chance to have a family. There were many good men looking for wives. Surely she could find one to love, to make her forget him. Maybe it would be better if she went farther west where the feeling between the union   and the Confederate states wasn’t so strong.

But no sooner did he think of sending Rose away than he knew he couldn’t do it. He might not know the true nature of his feelings just yet—and that made him feel rather foolish—but whatever his feelings, they were tenacious.

He just hoped they were honest and honorable as well.





The first week of the roundup was hell. The work was brutal. The heat was murderous. And the tension was homicidal. Jeff never came near the house or mentioned Rose’s name, but his anger hung in the air like a sword over their heads.

Tempers stretched to the limit were sent hurtling over the edge by his forked tongue. George counted himself lucky that neither Monty nor Hen had shot Jeff. The only thing that prevented a blowup was that with ten men working the cattle, George was able to keep Jeff away from the twins nearly all the time.

Branding, cutting, and counting calves was nothing compared to driving a fifteen-hundred-pound longhorn from the brush. They didn’t want to leave their familiar haunts. Many of them had grown up without being herded or bothered. Quite a few had never been branded. The twins had done their best, but keeping the rustlers at bay, watching for Cor-tina’s bandits, and trying to stay alive had taken up too much of their time. Every fifth or sixth animal was an unbranded bull.

The longhorns wouldn’t come out of the brush without being driven. Some slept during the heat of the day and grazed at night. They turned foul-tempered when anything disturbed their sleep. George was glad he had been able to find some Mexican vaqueros to go in after them. The vaqueros had a knack for understanding the longhorns and knowing how to come out of the brush alive.

He also hoped that hiring the vaqueros would help build up some loyalty to his ranch. He couldn’t pay them a wage, but the beef and hides he gave them would help support their families. He hoped it would make them less likely to steal from him or allow their friends to do so.

Once the vaqueros had flushed the longhorns from the brush, it was up to the rest of the men to herd them to the corrals. Driving the wild-eyed, mean-tempered beasts anywhere was hot, exhausting, and dangerous. The men needed fresh horses every couple of hours.

Some of the cattle couldn’t be rounded up. They were wilder than deer and just as fast and agile. They swam like ducks, jumped like antelope, and fought like wounded boars. When aroused, they would attack anything that moved.

One day George heard the bleating of a calf. Almost immediately he heard the sound of steers stampeding through the brush. At first he thought they were running away. Then he realized they were running toward the calf calling for help. Within minutes a dozen steers were closing in on the thicket where the distress call came from. George heard a terrific disturbance from within the thicket. Even at a distance, he could see the chaparral shaking. Suddenly a wolf exploded from the brush chased by half a dozen longhorns. Even running for his life, the wolf couldn’t match the longhorns’ speed. Right there before George’s eyes, they chased the wolf down and ground him beneath their hooves.

George decided not to disturb this thicket until they had time to calm down, but both the unwanted bulls and the poor-quality cows would have to be culled if he was going to upgrade the herd. He would give some to the vaqueros. Some more would be butchered by the rustlers. Those left would be shot for their hides and tallow.

The work of branding was hot and rough, but using the pens made it possible to brand the full-grown bulls as well as castrate them without as much danger of being killed. With five ex-Confederates, five Randolph brothers, and as many as ten Mexicans, the work progressed steadily. George intended to work his way over every inch of their land and a good bit more besides. No one else had a ranch within fifteen miles. Theoretically every cow belonged to him and his brothers.

But not everyone agreed. Hardly a day passed that he didn’t come upon a bleached cow skeleton. Some of them must have been killed even before the war. There were no ranches around, but there were people who thought they had a right to Randolph beef. Jeff might believe they only took what they needed to survive, but George soon decided that “what they needed to survive” seemed to be a steady diet of beef.