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There was a studious attempt by the cowboys to take no notice of her return to the camp circle, but it didn’t make it any easier to rejoin them. Everyone had finished eating, and the dirty plates and cutlery were piled in the “wreck pan” to be washed. Lorna noticed the tubful of dishes. Without offering a word of explanation to Benteen, she moved away from his side and walked to the chuck wagon, where the cook was putting some beans to soak.
“I will wash the dishes for you,” she stated, and saw his head jerk, a refusal forming in his expression, so she quickly continued with more poise than she felt. “You may not want any help with the cooking, but I can’t imagine any man wanting to wash dishes. So I’ll do them for you.”
“Usually the wrangler or his helper does them,” the cook explained. “But I reckon they won’t object to losin’ the job.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rusty.” Lorna began rolling up her sleeves to tackle the tubful of dishes. Benteen had indicated everyone regarded her as a spoiled child. She intended to show them that she wasn’t above doing menial tasks and that she intended to pull her own weight.
Her new role as cook’s help was duly
noted by the cowboys as they came to the wagon to get their bedrolls stowed in the front. Benteen noticed, too, but with mixed reaction. He wanted her accepted by the men as his wife, but he didn’t want her to associate with them too closely. Over the long haul, it would invite trouble. For the time being, he let it stand.
After assigning men to the four sets of guards drawing night herd duty, Benteen saddled his night horse for his own final check of the cattle. He led it to the chuck wagon, where Lorna was busy scouring the tin plates. Her glance was faintly defiant.
“I’m riding out to the herd,” he said.
She nodded, rinsed the plate in her hand, set it aside, and reached for another. Benteen briefly met Rusty’s glance, then looped the reins over his horse’s neck and swung into the saddle.
The herd was bedded down not far from camp on a stretch of level ground—an area the Longhorns would have picked for themselves. With their thirst quenched and their bellies full, the cattle were lying down. Despite the stampede earlier, they showed no signs of being restive. As Benteen walked the dun horse in a wide circle around the herd, he picked out the brindle steer in the moonlight, resting a little off from the main bunch. Willis and Garvey had pulled the first watch. A rider approached, making his slow circle and hunching loosely over the saddle. Benteen recognized Garvey’s musical, crooning voice singing a stanza of “The Old Chisholm Trail.”
I’m up in the mornin’ afore daylight
And afore I sleep the moon shines bright.
Come a ti yi yippy, yippy yay, yippy yay,
Come a ti yi yippy, yippy yay.
No chaps and no slicker, and it’s pouring down rain,
And I swear, by God, that I’ll never night-herd again.
Come a ti yi yippy …
Garvey let the song trail off in mid-chorus as he drew even with Benteen, both horses stopping for the riders’ brief palaver.
“They’re as contented as ticks on a dog,” Garvey said.
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Benteen replied, and kneed his horse forward. Behind him, Garvey picked up the chorus where he’d left off.
… yippy yay, yippy yay.
Come a ti yi yippy, yippy yay.
I went to the boss to draw my roll,
He had it figured out I was nine dollars in the hole.
There was a score of verses or more. Benteen knew Garvey was likely to sing them all and make up a few of his own before his two-hour shift was through. Rounding the herd, Benteen angled the dun horse toward camp. To the south he caught the winking light of another campfire. Bob Vernon had been one of the three drag riders today, and he’d mentioned to Benteen that the Ten Bar herd was behind them.
He left the dun tied at the picket line and carried his saddle to the camp circle. Lorna was sitting by the fire, staring into the flames, something no range-wizened cowboy would do because it blinded him when he looked into the night and its differing textures of darkness.
Knowing the night might be short and the following day long, most of the trailhands were stretched out on the ground, a “soogan”—quilt—cushioning its hardness. Many of them still had their hats on or were using them to cover their faces. Bob Vernon, the scholar of the bunch, was reading a dog-eared copy of Plato for the fifth time.
A cowboy’s bedroll was more than just a soogan and a tarp. It held nearly all his possessions that he didn’t carry on his person. Everything from tobacco sacks and cigarette papers to a spare cinch and a rope, from a change of clothes to a picture of his family or his girl, from old letters and reading material to a marlinespike, was kept in it.
Young Joe Dollarhide was sitting with Lorna, too green to the trail to know that the sleep he was missing might be all he’d get for two days or more. It happened like that sometimes when herds got it into their heads to stampede. They could keep a man in the saddle for days with no sleep and only dried jerky to eat.
“I’m plannin’ on havin’ a big spread of my own someday,” Joe Dollarhide was bragging to Lorna when Benteen walked up. “I already got my brand all picked out. A dollar mark for my name—a dollar mark on a cowhide.” He liked his cleverness in coming up with the association and wanted Lorna to notice it, too. Then he was absently modest. “’Course, it’ll be a few years before I get a place of my own.”
