“We don’t aim to keep them long, sir.”
“No?”
“No, sir. We aim to drive them to market.”
Forester looked up from his glass. For just a split second, Will glimpsed life in the man’s eyes, but when Forester spoke, his gaze had gone flat again. “Used to drive them up to Missouri. Then they locked us out on account of tick fever. Where you boys reckon you’ll take them, Shreveport?”
“No, sir,” Rufus spoke up. “Abilene.”
“Abilene?” Forester said. His voice was full of gruff challenge, but Will hadn’t noticed another flash of life in his eyes. “Heard Chisholm blazed a trail. Used the Wichita tribe to pack it hard for him. Smart man, Chisholm.”
“Yes, sir,” Will agreed. “He’s a good man.”
“You might not think so, you get on that trail of his. You know the trouble with a trail paved by Indians?”
“Indians, sir?”
“That’s right. And that’s a lot of trouble. One time, after Missouri closed its doors, we took the western trail. Ran into Kiowas and Comanches. It’s a wonder any of us even survived.Wouldn’t have if there weren’t so many of us, and every last man a battling Texan at heart.”
Forester polished off his whiskey and poured some more and launched into a lengthy tale of his drive through Indian country and how the Kiowas had stampeded their herd, not once but twice, and stolen some of their horses in the night. And the sheer terror of Comanche raids, the lords of the plains riding down on them, whooping and firing their rifles and bows like horsemen of the apocalypse.
Although Forester was recounting the hardest of hard times, life came into his eyes as he spoke. Not just a flicker this time. His eyes glowed, these memories rekindling something within him.
He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a forearm that was thick with muscle beneath the gray hair. At the once powerful arm’s center rose a knot of terrible scar tissue. “That’s where the arrow stuck me, but it was a good thing I got the arm up in time, or the thing would have split my heart in two, and then whose cold coffee would you be drinking?”
Forester slapped the table and laughed hoarsely and poured himself some more whiskey. “You boys sure you don’t want some? No? All right. Suit yourselves. Remembering the past makes my throat parched. Driving cattle is thirsty work. Hard work. You end up hungry, hot, freezing, tired… all on the same drive. Work like you’ve never known, driving cattle.”
Forester stopped himself then, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “Though you were in the war, weren’t you, Will?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you were a slave, Rufus?”
“Yes, sir.”
Forester shook his head. “Well, then I suppose you boys have seen your own hard times. You’ll have to excuse me. A manreaches a certain age, it seems no one ever had it half so hard as he did in his youth.”
“We know driving cattle is hard work, sir,” Will said.
“That ain’t the half of it, son. Gathering cattle’s hard work, too. Especially down in that godawful Thicket. You ever been down there?”
“Yes, sir,” Will said. “I had an uncle who lived down there.”
Forester raised one brow. “Ever gather cattle down there?”
Will shook his head.
“I have, sir,” Rufus said.
Forester turned his attention to Rufus, sizing him up afresh, the way men do when they brush up against another professional. “Tell me about it.”
Rufus related his trips into the Thicket, the challenges they’d faced, and rolled back his own sleeve to display scars of his own, permanent welts from thorns and a large, dark scar where a crafty bull had drawn him into a tangled pocket and slashed him with its horn.
Forester laughed. “Those bulls down there are monsters. Some of them, they aren’t even cattle, not really. They’re prehistoric creatures we don’t even have a name for. They’re too big to be cattle, too smart, too mean. It’s dangerous work, that’s for sure.”
“I never much minded danger,” Will said.
Forester grinned, his eyes glittering with life now. “It’s a young man’s work, gathering cattle. Especially in the Thicket.” He nodded, studying Will again. “But I can see you have fire. Both of you. Tell you what. How about I hire you boys? Money’s hard to come by these days, but I got some socked away. I could use two more good men.”
