Eagle Ed glanced at the tin cup. “What’s that?”
“Coffee.” Ben took a swallow.
“Coffee?” The man’s lip curled. “If you dump that out, I’ll give you a drink of something that’ll put hair on your chest.” He clinked his forefinger against the whiskey bottle.
“Coffee suits me fine.” Ben placed his hand over the top of his cup. “Any man hires on with me will drink coffee on the trail.”
Eagle Ed smirked. “I get the work done. After Goodnight and Loving, and maybe Chisholm, I’m the next top man.”
Maybe. Probably not. “I’m curious as to why you stayed behind and didn’t head out on the trail with Goodnight a couple weeks back.”
“Sick. Had a fit of fever. But I’ve been on my feet for a week now, tired of sitting around this hole.” Eagle Ed finished off his shot of whiskey.
Ben had heard as much. Was there more to the story? “I purchased the Widow Jenkins’s cattle. Goodnight loaned me a couple of hands?—”
“I heard. How many head did you manage to round up? I reckon some of them are scrawny.”
“Three hundred and fifty. Most are fit. They’d been lollying by streams, filling themselves on the grass nearby, and I’m looking to get them to market. Goodnight told me he had an idea for a new trail headed to Colorado by way of New Mexico Territory. A way to avoid Comanche raiders?—”
“I know the territory he’s riding through.” Eagle Ed dug in his trouser pocket and pulled out a plug of tobacco. “A camel would have to carry a canteen on that route, and even then, they’d reach their destination minus a hump.”
Ben frowned. “You know of a better route?”
Eagle Ed bit off a chaw. “Not unless you’re willing to risk losing your scalp. I can lead the way to New Mexico for the right price.” He rubbed his grimy thumb and forefinger together. “We’ll have to drive the cattle hard, and the men and horses even harder. Maybe we’ll catch up with Goodnight at Fort Sumner. Or maybe the U.S. Army at the fort will buy our beeves.”
“My beeves.” Ben set his cup down.
“Pay me in money or beeves. No difference to me. Just as long as you pay me. We’re liable to leave a dozen or two of the creatures hooves up, bones drying in the sun.” Eagle Ed leaned toward a spittoon in the corner and shot a stream of brown liquid through his teeth. “But it’s either that or wait for Goodnight. He might make another run for Colorado before fall. But I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.”
Ben scrubbed his hand over his jaw. The New Mexico trail was a risk, and so was trusting this man. But what if Goodnight didn’t make another run? Ben needed to get the cattle to market for Cora and secure the ranch on solid financial footing. They’d receive some money from the remainder of Cora’s family’s herd he’d sent with Goodnight three weeks ago, but that wouldn’t last but a few months, and they were already in debt to Miller’s store. Cora needed income to buy more cattle, not struggle by for months.
Ben puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “I’ll pay you a percentage of what makes it to market.”
He glanced at the brown liquid in the bottle. Just a little lighter amber color than laudanum. His finger twitched. Time to get out of this place.
Boots and stirrups damp from fording the Brazos River, Ben led his gelding through waves of prairie grass the next day. Three covered wagons stood in the shaded perimeter of a strand of cottonwoods along a creek. Not far from there, men worked on an almost completed double cabin. Although one cabin appeared to be finished, except for missing a chimney and window frames, the walls of the second stood beneath bare rafters. Horses grazed in a roped-off area. South of the creek, seedling plants populated a large stretch of overturned brown soil. A garden, and a good size one at that.
The Ramseys and the Reynolds had made significant progress on their homestead in the five weeks since he’d met them in Weatherford. But they still had plenty to do. What if they couldn’t spare him the help he needed?
“Welcome.” Hammer in hand, Devon Reynolds waved from the top of a ladder pitched against a rafter.
A fellow holding the other end of a shingle looked up.
At the corner of the unfinished cabin, Garret Ramsey rose, dropping a spatula into a bucket of mud-colored chinking. “McKenzie, you’re just in time to help.”
“I’d be happy to for a day.” Ben dismounted a few yards from the house. No hitching post in sight, he tethered his horse to a stake.
“My husband would ask no such thing. You’re a visitor.” Mrs. Sky Ramsey stepped through the door, Baby Katie on her hip. Strands of wavy dark hair hung loose from the mother’s braid and cascaded in ringlets around her face.
“I was only teasing the man.” Shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, Garret smiled as he walked over, his left foot not quite matching the cadence of the right.
“Afternoon, ma’am.” Ben tipped his hat to the handsome woman and turned to Garret. “I’d be more than happy to give you a day’s worth of work. It’d make me feel a whole lot better about what I’ve come to ask.”
“We’re your neighbors.” Garret wiped his hands on a rag and stood tall, surpassing Ben’s height by an inch or more. “Ask away.”
“Neighbors with a good thirty miles in between.”
Garret extended his hand for a shake, his grip firm. “We’re Yanks in Reb territory. A hundred miles in between would still make us neighbors.”
