Garrison's sense of foreboding haunted him across the rest of the day, no matter how he tried to alleviate it.
He scouted a secure stretch of bedding ground farther off the trail than usual, in case of trouble. Then he scouted it again, certain he'd missed something. A prairie dog village. A rattlesnake den. Loco weed, or some other poison plant.
If he had, he missed it the second time too.
He disliked not feeling he could count on himself.
"Herd spooky?" he asked Jorge, after returning to the herd to direct the point riders to the new ground.
The native Texian, one of his older and most experienced hands, shrugged. "They do not much like the wind, Jefe."
Nothing new about that. But before Garrison left, Jorge asked, "Where's Benj, Boss?"
That struck him as odd. Cooper sometimes rode point -- when he was of a mind to experience life as a working man. But nobody would call him regular in his habits. What prompted Jorge's interest?
"Camp." But Garrison wondered if he lied. Was the calf cart anywhere near the chuck wagon? Was Cooper still with the cart? Still with Elizabeth?
He told himself that would be a good thing.
He even mostly believed it.
Garrison swung by the remuda next. Some days, he might stop a spell and watch the horses. Even small, working mustangs were fine animals, bright and near poetic compared to the brute simplicity of cattle. He took some pride in the band he and Cooper had collected for this drive.
Today, he let young Tomas--the wrangler--meet him halfway out and gave his instructions from there. "Picket the wife's horse with the rest, tonight."
The vaquero's black eyes widened. "You expecting trouble, Boss?"
Was he? Or was he making extra work for everybody over nothing?
He wished he knew. But he could no more ignore his gut than he could discount storm clouds or spooky cattle. "Ain't expectin' a thing," he reassured the boy, without reassuring himself one whit.
"Is Mrs. Garrison with Amos, Boss?" asked Tomas.
"Reckon." Garrison headed westward, easing into a canter after the wagons. They often drove out of sight, mid-to-late afternoon, to reach the bedding grounds with time to fix supper afore the herd caught up. That distance put them at a greater risk, since the cowboys and a shotgun under the seat offered their only protection.
He soon distinguished the dust plume of the chuck wagon in the distance, still on course. The calf cart took longer to find, but eventually he spotted it stopped on a rise, mule unhitched and hobbled nearby with Cooper's unsaddled roan.
As he rode nearer, Garrison made out Amos crouched near the animals, working on something. He saw no sign of his wife or his partner until he drew very close indeed and his mare nickered a greeting.
Then Cooper rose into sight from behind the privacy of the cart itself and held up a hand, gesturing imperiously for Garrison to pull up.
He did--but he disliked taking orders, and waited for one fine explanation. Instead, Cooper sang some foolishness about his grandfather's clock:
" Ninety years without slumbering
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life's seconds numbering,
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OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)
Romance"And they lived happily ever--uh oh." Time traveler Elizabeth, aka "Lillabit," hardly expects miracles from her 19th-century marriage. But abandoning her modern world for love of an 1870s trail boss is hard enough without stampedes. And storms. A...
