With excruciating care, Edain did everything the way Ingolf had told him to. This time the arrow went shnnnk right into the base of a brush fifty yards away. By his banshee whoop, it had even been the one he was aiming at.
"Keep practicing," Ingolf said.
"That I will," the younger man said. He waved a hand around at the arid emptiness. "It's not as if I had anything else that needs doing, eh?"
Rudi nodded, and gave him a smile and a slap on the shoulder as he legged his horse up to a canter. I'll make him self conscious if I practice around here, he thought.
He was giving Epona all the rest he could, so he was on her daughter Rhiannon; the five-year old needed the exercise too, being more full of monkeyshines than her mother. Mathilda and the others were wearing light armor and practicing as well; Odard's man Alex was throwing rawhide disks to skip and bounce along the ground as they galloped by and shot, since he was good with a crossbow but no archer at all.
Hope he brought along a couple of extra crossbows, Rudi thought ironically. Not likely to find replacement parts out here.
Some of the score of Rancher Brown's hands along on the trek were practicing archery as well; it didn't take many to keep the horses moving. Rudi gave them a glance as he reined in next to the others.
"Not bad at all," he said.
Everyone nodded. They were all young, but they had been trained by professionals from childhood.
"Strange they're such good archers," Odard observed. "Most of them are barely even middling with the sword, and they're mere dubs as lancers."
"Not really strange," Rudi said. "It's the same reason they're such good riders. What they do to feed themselves in peace is training for war, you see. They spend most of their working lives in the saddle watching their stock. The bow's a tool for them too, for hunting or guarding the herds."
Mathilda spoke thoughtfully: "Mom and the Grand Constable are a bit worried about that," she said. "About the trouble it might cause in the long run. There's a lot of cowboys, not many in any one spot but a lot in total, because there's a lot of ranching country out there."
Mary and Ritva nodded silently. One of them took a small jar out of her saddlebag and they both applied the greasy looking lotion within to their faces and necks and hands. Mathilda took it with a sigh and began to do likewise.
"This stuff smells and feels like someone dragged a dead sheep through a field of wilted flowers, and then bottled it," she said.
"Lanolin with lavender extract," Ritva or Mary said. "Believe me, it's better than what the sun and wind out here do to your skin. This is from a shop in Bend."
Bob Brown came trotting over and heard the last re mark. "The Rovers use butter instead," he said, grinning. "Or sheep's-wool grease. You could try that…"
Mathilda shuddered again. Rudi took the jar and began to apply the lotion; he didn't like the feel or the smell either, but it helped. He wasn't quite as blister by lamplight as his redheaded mother, but it was close, despite his blood father, Mike Havel, being a quarter Indian. He didn't tan even as well as the twins, and the drying wind made his skin feel as if it were about to split over his cheekbones.
"Ride a bit with me," Bob said to Rudi.
The two men turned their horses aside; as he did so, Rudi caught Mary's eye-or Ritva's-and let one eyelid droop for an instant. The rancher's son pointed to their right, southward, as they ambled away from the main party. A rocky eminence stood about two thousand feet above the level of the plain.
"That there pimple is Lookout Butte-Buckskin Mountain, some call it."
Then he pointed directly east. "The old Whitehorse Ranch is thataway, less than a day's travel. That's where we're supposed to meet the buyers from Deseret and turn over the herd. There's good water there, wells, but pretty deep and not too much of it. The Rovers use it, but not usually this time of year-more in summer, when things dry up farther out. The Saints probably plan to head back east through Blue Mountain Pass afterwards; that's about another twenty, twenty five miles. Or maybe south over the old Nevada line. I didn't ask and they didn't tell me."
Rudi looked at the older man. "You're expecting trouble?" he said crisply.
"Hope not. But if there is trouble, that's where it'll be. The Rovers would rather steal horses than silver, but they wouldn't mind stealin' horses and silver and the gear from my bunch and the Deseret folks too, right down to our socks, you see what I mean? Not to mention our scalps."
Rudi looked slowly around the circle of the horizon. "They've been tracking us," he said.
" 'Course they have," Bob growled. "Herd this big, I might as well be wavin' a sign says, 'Rob me.' Or 'Kill me and lift my hair and then rob me.' Only that wouldn't be as dangerous as throwin' up a dust trail, on account of the Rovers can't read."
"Thanks for the heads-up," Rudi said. "If it comes to a fight, we'll do our part."
"We ought to scout ahead, but I don't like splittin' my people. We'd be shorthanded if they tried something tricky, like cutting part of the herd out after dark while another bunch made noise. Any of your folks you'd recommend?"
"I figured you'd ask that. Send the twins," Rudi said without hesitation. "For a quiet sneaky skulk, they're the best there is."
"You sure?" Bob said.
Rudi grinned. Cow-country people weren't as odd about girls and what they should do as Protectorate folk, but they weren't Mackenzies or Dunedain or Bearkillers either.
"You can come out now," he said, in a normal conversational tone.
One of them rose from behind a sagebrush that grew on the edge of a shallow gully, one small enough you'd swear it couldn't have hidden a jackrabbit. Rudi could tell she was breathing fast-she'd had to duck into the depression and run crouched over-but she hid it well.
"Shit! Jesus! " Bob said.
Then he swore again as he looked over his shoulder and saw the other twin raise her head over a rock and wiggle her fingers too, with a smug little can't catch me smile.
"Maybe you know what you're talking about, Rudi."
"Maybe. And we should get Ingolf in on this. He's got a lot more experience running a war band than I do."
Bob looked at him. "Not all that many men your age admit they've got anything to learn."
"I'm young," Rudi said, putting on the air of a man making a great concession. "But I'm not stupid… I hope."
"There it is," Mary-or Ritva-said.
Rudi, Ingolf and Bob Brown lay on the ridge, about a hundred feet above the level of the plain. The ruins of Whitehorse Ranch lay a little less than a mile to the east, with steeper heights rising beyond above the clump of dead cottonwoods and maples. Rudi watched, occasionally raising his binoculars, and fought back a sneeze from the pungent desert herbs crushed under their bodies.
There were people there now, using the roofless buildings and their half dozen wagons to make an improvised fortress; a dark banner hung limp in the warm dry air over one of the vehicles. Horsemen prowled around the laager, with no more order than a pack of wolves. .. and no less. As they watched a dozen of them suddenly set their horses forward at a gallop, raising a plume of dust. Steel twinkled within it as they rose in the stirrups and shot, then wheeled away again. The field glasses showed long spears leveled among the wagons, and the flash of bolts as they shot back-crossbows rather than archery, he decided.
"How many of the Rovers?" he asked thoughtfully.
"Around ninety, assuming all the ones we saw this morning are here," one of the twins said.
Bob had a pair of binoculars too. "Make that around eighty-nine," he said. "One of 'em just dropped out of the saddle and they're carryin' him away looking limp. It surely is a war party, right enough-no stock but their remounts, no women or kids or wagons, just some packhorses and a couple of tents."