“The cattle stir up the quicksand at the bottom,” explained Cal. “So we find it easier to cross.” He blinked very hard then, as if something had just occured to him. “Can you swim, Ada?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can swim.”

  “Can you swim well?”

  “Yes, Cal. But I think you’re bein’ too hasty.”

  “I won’t handle any more delays,” he said shortly. “Just follow Miranda’s lead when we cross. I’m movin’ up ahead.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. But he rode off before me.

  I found out Blossom didn’t like the water. Which wasn’t strange. A steer would go swimming all day if you let it. But you’d have better luck getting a vulture to swim than a horse, in some cases.

  “Come on girl,” I coaxed. Just looking at the sluggish-moving stream unnerved her. She danced under the reins.

  I watched the men drive the steers across. Guts, like me, hung back with his horse.

  “You ought to loosen the saddle,” he said.

  “You done this before?”

  He shook his head. His big eyes rolled. Guts, I think, was a little afraid of me. He’d never been able to shake the feeling that I was some kind of witch- a feeling poor dead Tucker had probably encouraged. “I just heard that, from Cal.”

  I dismounted and took my stiff fingers to the straps.

  Cal came over. He nodded in approval. “Give her her head when she gets in the water. If she bucks you off grab onto her tail and let her guide you. Splash water on her head to direct her.”

  I nodded numbly. He left.

  “You can swim?” I asked Guts.

  “No,” he said.

  “But Cal said the river ain’t gonna be taller than my shoulder.”

  “Well, you the tallest among us. Next to Cal.”

  I’d never seen an Adam’s apple so big as the one Guts had bobbing on his throat. He looked like a nervous bird.

  “How we gonna get that across?” I asked, jerking my head to Tucker’s horse. The body still lay slung across its back.

  “I dunno,” mumbled Guts. He was nearing the end of his limit, speaking to me. I believe the man was scared of women.

  “You think it floats?” I said.

  “I dunno.”

  “We ain’t gonna drown,” I assured him.

  Poor Guts. He shrugged and capered off to Miranda, who was arranging the chuck wagon for the crossing.

  After a while, watching the cowboys drive the herd, I lost some of my fears. It looked easy enough. The cattle liked the water, but they had a herd mind. As long as we got a few of them on shore, the rest would follow.

  Butch and Saint, the point drivers, took the lead steer across. Cal sat aside to give direction. Once Butch and Saint got their charges safe on the opposite bank, Guts was up next, taking the swing of the herd. It amazed me how the cattle came to be of one mind.

  “You’re comin’ across with me,” said Cal, coming over to me. “Since Tucker’s gone, I’m doin’ the tail.”

  “It doesn’t look so hard.”

  “I’ve been on a drive with three thousand head. We’re lucky we only got six hundred.”

  Finally only the stragglers remained on our side of the riverbank. I gave my horse her freedom and dismounted. As Cal had instructed, I held the rolled-up buffalo robe above my head. The men drove the horses and cattle through the deeper part of the river. That way the animals couldn’t turn a leg on the shifting river stones at the bottom. For me, I could take the shallows. Which was just fine. I took the first step into the river.

  I let Blossom go on ahead. She was more comfortable crossing without a rider. I waded in myself.

  I kept my head well above, trying not to think about the bottomless depths, trying not to think about what three hundred cattle might have left behind in the muddy water. It was hard, trying to hold the buffalo robe up with one hand and paddle with the other.

  I reached the middle of the river and stepped right into a sharp current. I pulled hard against it, nearly dunking the buffalo robe. My head dipped under.

  And then Cal was there. He lifted the robe from my hands and waded ahead. Big as he was, the water came up only to his shoulder.

  I cleared the rest of the crossing. Cal met me on the other side. A little twinkle in his eye- or just a trick of the sunlight?

  “Alright?” he drawled.

  “Freezing,” I chattered.

  “Put this on.” He handed me one of his shirts. I threw it on over the Indian shirt and stepped off to the side. Most of the men broke off to help the disoriented cattle back on track.

  Tim came last. He had to corral the spare horses and lead them across. The one carrying Tucker’s body- by then a putrid mass- came last.

  Big Girl was among those horses. Cal went across to get her himself.

  “She’s water shy,” he explained.

  “Can she cross it?”

  “Sure, but not with Tim Barlow squeakin’ at her rump. She don’t like his voice.”

  He left his hat and shirt at my feet and plowed into the water.

  “Leave her be, Tim!”

  Tim released Big Girl’s reins. His own horse, Froggy, kept trying to plunge them both into the water at once. Horses were like people, it was true. Some hated the water; others couldn’t get enough of it.

  “I don’t know about this, Cal,” said Tim. “The body’s spookin’ her.”

  Big Girl was balking from the canvas-wrapped body, it was true. Tucker’s old horse had no sense of smell. But Big Girl was younger and more sensitive.

  “Then get him out of there, Tim!” barked Cal.

  “I’m tryin’,” said Tim, drawing hard on Froggy’s reins for the tenth time. Tucker’s horse kept dipping its hooves into the water and withdrawing.

  Cal gave up and took Big Girl down to a different spot. I followed him along the banks.

  “What you doin’?” I called across.

  “I think there’s some flat stones here. She can walk across.”

  “I thought you’d done this before.”

  “Ada, this really ain’t the time.”

  “There’s a current there.”

  “I see it, woman.”

  The spot he’d chosen didn’t look that much shallower to me. But I guess he knew better. As Tim got his horse under control and drove the rest of the spares across, I took a seat and watched.

  “That horse is a brat,” observed Saint, pulling up next to me. He looked immaculately clean, as always, though he’d crossed the river same as the rest.

  “She’s not so bad.”

  “She’s like Cal. Stubborn. Only does things one way.”

  “I don’t think Cal is like that.”

  “No, I don’t expect you would.”

  Tim gave a shout. The bonds tying Tucker’s body to the horse suddenly gave out. Or the horse slipped them, somehow.

  “Get it, Guts!” he yelled.

  “I ain’t goin’ near that thing,” Guts hollered. He’d been standing in the water, fully clothed and booted. The sight of Tucker Mayfield’s shroud floating towards him set him right off. With a yelp he scrambled back to shore.

  “Aw damn it!” said Tim. Froggy plunged into the water, bobbing up again with a soaked and sputtering Tim.

  Tucker’s body floated right down past the confounded Cal. It spun off through the rushes and winked out of sight. Cal’s brow clouded.

  “What the hell is goin’ on up there?” he shouted.

  “Looks like Tucker still had some business in Texas,” Saint called. “He went back to take care of it.”

  “That ain’t funny,” said Stu Little. “That’s bad luck.”

  “Bad luck for a corpse to float?”

  “Don’t talk ill of the dead,” he said, and spat.

  Guts vomited right there on the riverbank. Cal was having trouble of his own. It looked like the water was rising.

  “You alright?” called Saint.

  Cal didn’t reply. Big Girl had sat her butt right on the riverbank and wouldn’t move for nothing. I could see Cal getting redder and redder. He’d never struck me as the type to lose his temper with a horse. Today might be the exception.

  “Cal,” said Saint. “You better hurry up.”

  It’s funny how nature can do things so slowly, but they somehow manage to sneak up on us all at once. The tide had been rising for the last ten minutes. In that time the current began to speed up. Busy as we were watching Cal, we didn’t notice until the water started wetting the tops of our shoes.

  Cal finally got Big Girl to get up. He was digging in his pockets for all kinds of treats. I think most of the cowboys in that moment just wanted him to shoot the animal and be done with it.

  “For all his talk of slowin’ down he’s a piss poor trail driver,” noted Butch. “Seems like every time we had to stop was ‘cause of him.”

  He eyed me pointedly.

  “If he loses that horse we’ll be behind anyway,” I said primly. I wasn’t going to let a jackass like Butch talk Cal down in front of me.

  “She’s right,” said Saint.

  At that moment Cal stumbled. He stumbled right into the water and went under.

  Saint got to his feet. “Hey now.”

  I expected all animals had the same kind of instinct; Big Girl may have hated the water, but I thought she’d swim the same as Froggy or Peach had. Not the case. The current played with her, sending her in a disoriented path along the banks. We waited for Cal to surface.

  And waited.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Saint.

  I went right up to the water before they could stop me. Nothing showed above the surface. Not a single ripple.

  “Cal!” I screamed.

  “I’ll go in,” said Saint.

  But I wasn’t going to wait. The water broke across my body with a new coldness. Something upriver had shifted the current. It was a different river now.

  Big Girl still refused to get on shore. She started panting and screaming to the men, who waded in to wrangle her. But the moment they got close enough to grab the reins, she kicked out and plunged back into the deep spots.

  “Cal!” I screamed.

  “Wait!” called Saint. “You’ll go and drown yourself!”

  I swam out to where Cal had been. Saint was still struggling with his boots on shore. The Spanish skirt weighed me down, and billowed when I dipped below the surface.

  I found Cal immediately. He was twitching and grabbing- I let him grab at me. Somehow he’d got himself feet-first in a patch of quicksand. Even Cal, the seasoned cowboy, would have a hard time not struggling in a thing like that. But I remembered him saying the key was to stay still. Why couldn’t he follow his own advice?!

  If he kept thrashing around he’d only drag me under. Well, I wasn’t going to have that.

  I went up for air.

  “He’s here!” I shouted.

  Saint dove in to join me. The boys had found a rope. They tossed it; Saint caught, and I swam down and tried to get it around Cal.

  I couldn’t tie it. Saint jumped in to help.

  Somehow we got the rope around Cal’s waist and the boys on shore started pulling. One Cal felt what was going on he stopped wriggling. I splashed my way to shore and made to help.

  He hauled out of the river like a landed fish. We crowded around him.

  “Cal,” I said. “You damn idiot.”

  Cal opened his mouth and vomited a torrent of dirty river water. He lay back panting and holding his chest.

  “We thought you were done for,” said Butch.

  “What the fuck happened?” said Saint. “It ain’t like you to get stuck.”

  He wiped his mouth and spat. And spat. “Jesus Christ,” he rasped.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Stumbled, that’s all,” he said.

  We looked out at the river. Big Girl was happily splashing away, still on the other side.

  Cal rolled his eyes up to the sky.

  “Someone better get that horse.”

  Every spare hand went to wrangling Big Girl. Cal stayed seated and poured the water out of his boots. I hovered near him. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “I almost died,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “You fool,” I blurted. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

  He looked at me, amused. “No sweet words for me, Ada?”

  “I don’t feel too sweet right now, seein’ you almost dead.”

  He rubbed his face and laughed. It turned into a hacking cough.

  “I suppose you’ll go and get sick now!” I said miserably.

  His cough became a laugh. I sat next to him. We watched the men struggle with his horse.

  “I like hearin’ you give concern for me,” he said. “You’d make a good wife, the way you fuss.”

  “Damn you.” I didn’t want him to see the blush creeping into my face.

  “There’s that foul mouth I’m used to,” said Cal. He pinched my side. “Don’t you worry, Boston. It ain’t my time to go.”

  6

  Branson, Kansas. A no-count town if there ever was one. It thrived off whatever the sore-backed men could scrape from the local mine, and the little business the cowboys brought in on their drives. The nicest building there was the church, which had been built by a wealthy parson, they said, who died of cholera not two weeks past. Cal said we’d only stay on long enough to take on two more hands. He supposed just one or two nights. Then we’d be gone back up the trail.

  After all, someone had to look after the cattle. We couldn’t very well drive three hundred head into the town and have them fed and watered for as long as we wanted. The herd had to be shifted for grazing, and kept in the pace of the drive. Otherwise, Cal said, they would wander off or go ornery.

  “If we ain’t back on the drive by Wednesday,” he growled, “I’m holdin’ you all accountable. Don’t act a fool in that town. I know the sheriff, and he’s a right mean bastard.”

  “He means no gunfightin’,” added Saint, looking at Tim.

  “You ride on ahead, Butch,” said Cal. “Tell our contact up in Baxter where we’re at.”

  He chose Butch deliberately, because they’d had a fight. He wanted to put some distance between it. And he wanted to keep the biggest troublemaker away from the rest of the boys, for fear they’d get into hijinks in Branson and delay our stay.

  As it turned out, Cal’s fears were valid. We ended up staying much longer than he intended.

  For one thing, in Branson there was a whorehouse. Since they couldn’t use me for the purpose of exhausting their passions, the men started slipping away from the drive and paying little visits to town. Little visits that became long visits.

  “I’ll whip them all,” raged Cal.

  “Saint went with them,” said Joseph, who had reappeared, somehow, the moment we came in view of Branson. “You can’t whip Saint.”

  “I should leave ‘em all behind and hire new blood. There’s plenty of layabouts here lookin’ for work.”

  “You go do that,” said Joseph.

  “Where did you go?” I asked him. Cal stamped off to check the herd.

  “To see my grandmother.”

  “I thought you saw her in Texas!”

  “That was my other grandmother.”

  Cal stayed camped out with the herd, along with Tim, who was itching to go into town, but too scared of Cal to attempt it. Guts also stayed. I think the idea of whores scared him even more than Cal did.

  Saint returned later. A huge dent sat in the middle of his hat, and a pretty red slash decorated his cheek. He had dust on his shirt. And he looked madder than a dog with no tail.

  “Who spit in your coffee?” said Tim.

  Saint aimed a cuff at him, then turned to Cal. “We can’t stay in this darn town a second more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “These farmers are up in arms about the cattle. A gang of ‘em nearly bust my ass right outside the courthouse.”

  “I’ll go talk to ‘em,” said Cal, reaching for his hat.