The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch by Paul Bagdon

couldn’t pass it and the few desert
pines up. We ate jerky and drank coffee. About
dark, Arm cleared his throat. “Uhh…that booze
you brought along…”
    I fetched the bottle and we each had a couple
snorts.
    “We will hit tracks maybe two days, maybe
more,” Armando said. “A big herd like you say,
even a Anglo could follow.”
    I let that pass.
    Mustangs tend to cover a lot of ground in their
daily search for grass and water, but they tend to
stay in pretty much the same areas. If we rode
long enough, it was a pretty sure thing we’d come
upon the horses or their tracks, and Arm and I
both knew that, so there was no real hurry.
    Arm’s horse picked up a shard of rock between
his shoe and hoof in his left front and by midday
began favoring it. I dug it out with my Barlow
knife and we packed it with mud and the horse
grunted in the way of thanks. We made camp
right there to make sure the hoof was okay.
    I walked out to scrounge up a meal. Armando
won’t eat snake—some Mexican mumbo jumbo
forbids it—and I passed by a couple of fat rattlers
taking the sun on rocks. They’d have made a
good stew and broiling pieces on sticks over a fire
wouldn’t have been a bad meal, either.
    There were plenty of jackrabbits around and I
bagged a pair of fine ones, one shot apiece from
a draw, which ain’t bad shootin’, if I do say so
myself.
    Arm had a fire going by the time I got back to
our camp and I could smell the mesquite burning
from a good distance off. One of the few benefits
of being an aimless drifter or a cowpoke is that
smell—it’s fresh and almost sweet and jacks up a
man’s spirits every time.
    We cooked the jacks about dusk and then
settled back with a sip of booze, contented, full of
stomach, enjoying the sunset.
    “Soon, I theenk, we will come on them horses,”
Arm said.
    “We haven’t seen a single track or a solitary
lump of horse apple, Arm. Could be a while yet.”
    “Some theengs I jus’ know,” he said, ending
that conversation. Arguing with Armando makes
as much sense as arguing with a chicken.
    “I’m wonderin’ how many we can drive,” I
said. “They’re bound to be as wild as hawks—even
the mares—an’ might not take to bein’
pushed in one direction.”
    “We take the stud, his ladies’ll follow,” Arm
said. A rope on either side an’ he got no choice,
Jake—the sumbitch’ll either come or we’ll drag
him along, no?”
    “We’ll see, I guess.”
    In the morning Arm’s horse was as fit as a four-month
old colt. We lit out early.
    We saw no tracks that day and the sun was
flexing its end-of-summer muscles. We emptied
our canteens into our hats for our horses early on.
We hit some piss-poor water late in the day, but it
was better than nothing, an’ was safe to drink—
the tracks around the stingy little puddle proved
that. No prairie or desert critter is going to drink
water that’ll croak him. Somehow, they know
what’s okay an’ what isn’t.
    Jerky and foul water doesn’t make much of a
meal, but we ate it anyway, figuring on taking
another couple of jacks or prairie hens toward the
end of the day.
    It was too damned hot to ask our animals for
any speed, so we plodded along, dripping sweat.
    “Prolly last day of the year we sweat,” Arm
said. “ ’Fore long, we be freezin’ our asses off.
Makes a man wonder why anyone, they’d decide
to live out here,” Arm said.
    “Well, hell. Free grazin’, for one thing. Some
of the valleys are the prettiest places on earth, an’
the soil ain’t ever been turned. It’ll grow anything.
Plus,” I added, “it ain’t all jammed up with
people like bankers an’ lawmen an’ churches an’
such.”
    “Ees true. Hard men roamin’ about though,
no? The crazies from after the war, them ones
who hangs los negros, Quantrill an’ his gang, all
them’re thicker’n fleas on a dog’s ass.”
    “Maybe so. Sure, they’re out an’ around. But we
ain’t seen much of them, an’ we’re tougher than
they are. They