Mal gave this advice for reasons that were not entirely honorable and disinterested. ’Cause while he was indeed playing the field, treating himself to many a go-round on that metaphorical carousel, there was one girl he had set his sights on above all the rest; one who captivated him and whose presence never failed to thrill him; one who in the fullness of time, when the moment was right, he would make his. And she was called Jinny Adare.
Now, as Jinny worked her wiles on Toby, all the kid could do was blush and nod.
“Since when has Jamie ever led us astray?” she added.
“I could count the times on my fingers, but I’d run out of hands,” Toby replied. He scrubbed his head. “My hair ain’t ever felt the same since it grew back.”
Jamie chortled. “Fair comment. But this time it ain’t just some prank, Toby old pal. This is serious. Nobody else is gonna hold Ponticelli to account. The old bastard’s been riding roughshod over this town for years. We can show him what we think about that, and if we do it right, he won’t even know it was us.”
Several beers later, the plan — such as it was — had been finalized.
They rode to the Ponticelli ranch on horseback, leaving their mounts tethered to a tree a mile out and going the rest of the way on foot. Mal took point. He was generally agreed to be the best plainsman among them. He knew the lay of the land like nobody’s business, having spent much of his childhood exploring and roaming the county. Growing up with no father at home to curb him and his mother too busy to tend to him, he had been more or less a free agent. His attendance record at school had been patchy verging on nonexistent. He had invariably found the lure of the wilderness far stronger than the lure of the classroom.
The night was moonless but the starlight bright enough to see by as Mal led the other Amigos along a back trail, down a narrow defile, and across a dry creek bed. They moved in a wide circle around Mort Ponticelli’s homestead so that they approached it from the rear, coming at it from the cover of a thicket of tall scrub and knotty cactus. The longhorn cows in the corral lowed nervously as they tiptoed closer.
“Which ones are his and which the Hendricksons’?” Toby whispered.
“No way of telling,” said Jamie. “But it makes no nevermind. He poached a dozen, so we take a dozen, any dozen. That’s fair and square.”
Mal, Jamie and Jinny slipped over the corral fence while Toby kept lookout. There were no lights on in any of the windows of the house, and just a single porch lamp winking on the veranda at the back.
They had brought rope, and carefully they fashioned halters and slipped them around the necks of a dozen cows, joining them together in pairs.
Then Jamie unlatched the corral gate and opened it, nice and slow, and the others began leading the tethered cattle out two by two, like latterday Noahs with a very singular notion of which species they were going to load aboard their Ark.
All was going smoothly until one of the final pair of cows got it into its head to complain. It began to make those anxious, hiccupping moos that signaled bovine distress, and Mal could only assume that it was one of Ponticelli’s own livestock, rather than any of the Hendricksons’. It had been born and raised on this patch of land and didn’t cotton to the idea of being removed.
Jinny laid a hand on the cow’s nose and murmured in its ear in order to quieten it. She had a way with cattle. They seemed to succumb to her charms as readily as any human male. The steer bowed its head, almost as if in apology for having caused a fuss.
Mal cast an anxious eye towards the house. No lights coming on. No one shouting. They’d gotten away with it.
Then they hadn’t.
The back door burst open, and there on the veranda was Mort Ponticelli himself. He powered up a thousand-lumen flashlight and swung the beam towards the corral. It was as bright as the sun, a ray of incandescent brilliance that dazzled all of the Four Amigos, freezing them in place.
“You lousy varmints!” Ponticelli yelled. “I see you. You stop right there. I got a rifle and I ain’t afraid to use it.”
To underscore his point, he loosed off a round. He aimed high deliberately, but not that high. The bullet zipped only a few feet above their heads, buzzing through the air like an angry and very lethal wasp.
“Warning shot,” Ponticelli said. “Next one goes right through one of you.”
They all looked at Jamie.
“What do we do?” Toby said.
Jamie’s jaw was set firm. “What we came here to do.”
So saying, he thwacked the hindquarters of the nearest cow, which was not one of the dozen tied in pairs. It let out a shrill objection and charged for the open gate. The other cattle in the corral saw this as an invitation to stampede. All at once, the whole herd, which numbered close on a hundred, were making a beeline for the gate. As they thundered through, the roped pairs which were already outside started running ahead of them. Freedom beckoned and they were all suddenly keen to seize the opportunity.
It was pandemonium, added to by Ponticelli, who began firing at the quartet of cattle thieves. Ducking low, Mal grabbed Jinny and hauled her towards the fence, using the fleeing cows as a shield. Jamie followed suit. They jumped the fence and kept running, joined now by Toby. Bullet after bullet zinged towards them, one coming so close to Mal that it struck the cow right next to him. The beast went cartwheeling over, 1,500 pounds of flailing legs and meaty body, and Mal had to fling himself to one side to avoid a collision. If the cow had rolled on him, he would have been flattened.
“Sonofabitch!” Ponticelli hollered from the house. He was clearly very upset to have killed one of his own cattle. “You’ll pay for that, you scumbags.”
Mal rose just in time to see another cow plunging towards him, head lowered. He was simply an obstacle in its way and it seemed to have no qualms about mowing him down.
Jinny saved him, yanking him by the scruff of the neck. Together they tumbled backwards onto the ground, and the cow lumbered past. They were back on their feet in no time, but Ponticelli had his range now. The next bullet he fired off came so close, Mal’s hair was wafted by the pressure wave of its passing. He and Jinny sprinted after Jamie and Toby, trying to put distance between them and the house, but a further bullet made the ground directly in front of their feet erupt in a tiny plume of dust. Mal was certain that Ponticelli wasn’t going to miss again.
Desperately he looked around for cover. There was nothing except the thicket, still fifty yards away. Then an idea occurred.
Yet another cow was trundling towards them. Mal grabbed it by the horns and hoisted himself onto its back. It was a feat of athleticism he would never have attempted under any other circumstances, and might never be able to repeat even if he wanted to.
“Jinny! Quick!”
He reached out to her. She accelerated to keep pace with the cow. Hands clasped forearms, and Mal swung her up behind him. The cow lolloped onward. Even burdened with two passengers, it was barely slowed. Better yet, just as Mal had hoped, Ponticelli was loath to take a shot at them and risk losing another head of prime beef. He obviously valued his livestock higher than his desire to see malefactors get their just desserts. His impotent shouts from the veranda trailed after them, dwindling in volume.