Moses shrugged. “Someone might show up looking for them tomorrow.”

J.B. nodded. “Yeah, we’ll wait and see.”

“Right. We’ll wait and see,” Moses said.

* * *

They kept them four days, then hauled them to a different auction house in a different county and came home with more money than they’d ever had at once.

After that, their consciences no longer bothered them like they had before, and they began looking for easy marks.

It was Moses who remembered that the Talbot property butted up to old man Bailey’s place, and it was Moses who also knew the old man was in a nursing home.

They scouted the place out one day, just to see if they could see any cattle in the Talbot pasture, and saw nice ones that would bring a good price.

Before, they’d just been availing themselves of wandering cattle, but this was their first venture into outright rustling. They were going on other people’s property, cutting fences, and stealing livestock.

“If we get ourselves a good load, then we won’t have to do this anymore,” Moses said.

“What do you mean?” J.B. asked.

“Well, with what we already have, and what we’ll get from a big haul, we’ll be sittin’ pretty come winter when the work dries up,” Moses explained.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” J.B. said. “When do you want to do it?”

“I say let’s come back here just before sunup. The cattle will come up for feed and we’ll get what we want and be gone before either one of the Talbots even get out of bed.”

J.B. grinned. “Good thinking, Moses.”

* * *

They made a quick run to a nearby town to get a couple of sacks of cattle cubes, then went home for the day so they’d be ready to get out before sunrise.

It wasn’t all that far to the old Bailey place from where they lived, and they were there within fifteen minutes. They followed their own tracks back through the overgrown pastures to the backside of the Talbot farm, then cut the fence and drove right out into the pasture, looking for the herd.

They found them just over the hill from where they’d come in, still bedded down. But when the cows heard the pickup and the trailer they were pulling rattling over the rough ground, they got up.

Moses turned in a half-circle so that they were now facing the cut fence for a quick exit, then got out and opened the back gate to the trailer.

“Let’s get the feed,” Moses said, then got a sack apiece, emptied them in a circle, and waited.

The cattle came running, pushing and shoving a little to get to the cubes. The Gatlin brothers let them eat a little, and then J.B. got a cattle prod, and Moses had a pole, and they got on either side of a couple of steers and just turned them around from where they were standing with the pole. Then with one poke of that prod, the first steer jumped forward right into the trailer and the other one followed. They got three head in the front half of the trailer, then shut that gate, and then took some of the feed and led two more inside. They didn’t know one of the cows they loaded up had a calf until it followed her inside and began to suck.