“Good-bye,” Maggie said. “Don’t forget where we are.”

“I won’t,” Pritchard said. He looked down at Bina, who was looking up at him.

“Am I ever going to see you again?” she asked.

“Unless you have another vision,” Pritchard said, “that ain’t for us to say.”

Pritchard tipped his hat, pointed Rusty east, and rode out. At the edge of Magdalena he was met with two dozen staked scalps. He ignored them and headed for Kansas.

PART FOUR - HOME

PART FOUR

HOME

Chapter 48

Chapter 48

Oklahoma Territory, July 1873

Ditch sat up with a start and instinctively grabbed for the Henry rifle lying next to him. There was a boot standing on it. He looked up from his bedroll at the men standing over him. Especially the one with the Smith & Wesson revolver pointed directly at his face.

In June, Ditch Clemson, his brother, Paul, Ramrod Alejandro Ruiz, and ten hired hands from the SD&P Ranch headed north from Texas for Abilene, Kansas, with over three thousand head of cattle.

Ditch’s first cattle drive had been slower going than he anticipated. He’d hoped for an average of fifteen miles per day, and some days he made that distance. But due to stubborn cows, dust storms, flash rains, attacks by roving bands of Wichita and Cherokee, and difficulties finding adequate water, he usually had to settle for ten. If the herd made twelve miles between sunup and sundown, he felt satisfied.

They’d been on the trail six weeks, and by Ditch’s estimation were only twenty miles south of the Kansas border, when he was awakened, not long after midnight, by the sounds of a scuffle in camp. When he awoke, he found Paul, Ruiz, and their cook disarmed and held at gunpoint by five hard-looking men wearing neckerchiefs across the lower portion of their faces. The interlopers were all big hombres, but one was especially big, almost a giant.

“You’re Clemson, right?” the one holding the revolver to Ditch’s head demanded. “The owner of this outfit?”

“One of them,” Ditch said, slowly raising his hands. “What is this?”

“This is us, takin’ your beef,” the man said, “that’s what it is. We surely do appreciate you herdin’ ’em up all the way from Texas for us, but we’ll take it from here. These cows are still goin’ to Kansas, like you planned, but it ain’t gonna be your outfit a-takin’ ’em.”

“What about the rest of my men?” Ditch asked.

“We ain’t done nuthin’ to ’em, yet,” the rustler said. “Far as we know, they’re still out ridin’ guard over your herd. We’re gonna wait right here in camp, until sunrise, when they all come in for breakfast. Then we’ll take ’em as easy as we took you.”