When it was all over, the steers dropped down to the ground to take a much-needed nap. Pretty soon they were snoring under the early-morning sun like nothing ever happened. Cowboys aren’t as lucky in such matters as cows, however. There’s no rest for us after a stampede peters out. You’ve got to fan out and round up the strays. I was fixing to bear down on a couple of loose steers when Gustav and Charlie rode up, both of them looking like they had a mouthful of something a dog wouldn’t eat.
“Did you see what started all this?” Charlie snapped at me.
“Well, it’s good to see y’all, too. Your concern for my well-being has me just about all teared up,” I said. “And no, I didn’t see what started this. I just heard someone set his gun a-goin’ and before I knew it I was up to my neck in beef.”
“How about Billy and Peanuts?” Gustav asked. “You seen ’em?”
“No. I haven’t seen ’em since...”
And then I realized why Charlie and Gustav looked so riled. Billy and Peanuts — alias Bill Brown and Conrad Emicholz — were the two fellows out on watch the same time as Gustav and me.
“Nobody else has seen ’em?”
Charlie shook his head. Gustav sighed.
“I’ll go back and look for them,” my brother said. He nodded at me. “Mind if I take him with me?”
Charlie looked thoughtful for a moment. “Yup, maybe you better.” And he wheeled his horse and rode off after those longhorns I’d been aiming at.
“So, little brother... I’m glad to see you didn’t get yourself killed last night,” Gustav said.
“Well, that just about sums up my feelings upon seeing you,” I said.
Gustav nodded. “All right, then.” That’s about as sentimental as he ever gets. “Let’s go get us some fresh horses.”
Once we had our new mounts, we headed back down the trail, Gustav riding the eastern side, me riding the western side. We saw a few strays, but no Billy and no Peanuts. A couple miles back we ran into the commissary hurrying to catch up with the herd. We asked Greasy Pete, our outfit’s biscuit rustler, if he’d seen the boys. He hadn’t. Before we rode on, Gustav asked if he could get a shovel and a scattergun out of the wagon.
“You expectin’ to use those?” asked Greasy Pete.
“Wouldn’t ask for ’em if I didn’t,” Gustav said.
This shovel and shotgun talk was making me jumpy as a jackrabbit, but I tried not to let on. I never could hide a thing from my brother, though. When Greasy Pete pulled out the scattergun for him, Gustav handed it over to me. He knew I’d take comfort from a piece of heavy artillery across my saddle.
About a half-hour after we left the chuck wagon, we found ourselves back where it all started — the spot where we’d had the herd bedded down for the night. The trail was plain as can be, being a quarter-mile wide and flat as a riverbed. There was some brush and trees on the western side, more brush and a small rocky bluff on the eastern side. “I was round about here, up toward the point, when those shots went off,” Gustav said. “How about you?”
“I’m not sure. It was mighty dark,” I said, not adding that it was so dark because I had my eyes closed at the time. “I think I must’ve been up toward the point, too. Seemed like pretty near the whole herd tried to plow me under once they got to runnin’.”
Gustav took his horse to a slow trot. He was headed for the rocks to the east. That made sense to me. It was the best place around for jumping a man. I followed, my palms slicking up the shotgun with sweat. As we rounded the bluff, I caught sight of something red pressed up against the gray rock. It looked to be a man. I stopped my horse and brought up the shotgun.
“Gustav,” I said.
“I see him,” my brother said. “Hey, Peanuts! I sure hope that’s you!”
There was no answer — no sound, no movement, nothing. Gustav unholstered his six-gun and fired off a shot into the sky. The red shape was as still as the rock around it. Gustav climbed down off his horse.
“Come on,” he said.
I dismounted and followed. I kept the shotgun leveled at the quiet fellow, though with the buzzing of flies growing louder as we approached I didn’t much expect him to kick up any kind of fuss.
It was Peanuts all right. He was in the same red calico shirt he’d been wearing the past two months. The red was darker now, though — soaked through with blood from his open belly and mangled scalp and empty eye sockets. He was propped up against the rock like he’d just leaned back to enjoy a little siesta in the shade. Billy was next to him, barked up just as bad. I did some colorful cursing of the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Apaches, and every other tribe under the skies. Gustav took it all more calm-like, which is his way when faced with the alarming or the unpleasant.
“Well,” he said, “now we know why the buzzards couldn’t lead us straight to ’em. If the boys had been left out under the sun, they’d be just about picked clean by now.” He kicked a clod of chewed-up sod thrown up by the stampede. “Or they would’ve been churned into butter by all those hooves.”
I turned, still cursing like thunder, and went to get back on my horse.
“What do you think you’re doin’?” Gustav called after me.
“I’m gonna track down those murderin’ sons of bitches and give ’em a taste of what they gave Billy and Peanuts. What do you think you’re doin’?”
“I’m buryin’ the boys and then I’m headed back up to join the outfit. And that’s what you’re going to do, too. That’s what I think.”
“But—”
“As long as you’re headed over there, you may as well grab the shovel off my horse and get to usin’ it. I think this is as good a place as any to lay the boys down.”
I did as I was told, though I cursed and kicked about it. As I got to work piling up dirt, Gustav showed me the lay of things.
“Whoever did this has got a six-hour jump on us at least, little brother. They’ll have some of our cattle with ’em for sure, and that’ll slow ’em down. But it would still take us hours to track ’em and catch up. And then what? It’s you and me and two exhausted horses against Lord only knows how many men. Nope. The only thing to do is give these two a proper burial and then go tell Charlie what happened.”
I couldn’t argue with the wisdom of it, but it didn’t sit right, I can tell you that. I tried to work my anger into my shoveling, and I sure gave that ground a good beating. While I was digging, Gustav was hunched over the bodies, looking them over as casual as he would a couple of ponies he was thinking about buying. He even handled them, leaning them forward so he could see their backs.
“Why are you pawin’ over them like that?” I finally asked him.
“Well,” Gustav said, kind of reluctant-like, “just between you and me and the boys here, I’m wonderin’ what Mr. Sherlock Holmes would make of all this.”
That put a twig up my snoot, I confess. I hadn’t known Billy and Peanuts very long, had never worked a drive with them before, but they were comrades just the same and it seemed disrespectful to be thinking about some magazine story when they hadn’t even been planted yet.
“That Holmes feller might be a sharp tack on paper, but he ain’t no Indian fighter,” I said.
“You see, the thing is, though, whoever barked these heads cut ’em up bad. Their scalps must’ve come off in four, five pieces. And—”
“Now ain’t that a scandal?” I cut in, snorting like a steer with a knot in his tail. “The Kiowas ain’t gettin’ enough practice with their scalpin’! I guess you better just write yourself a letter of complaint to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”