Chapter 4 #2
The rattling squeak of an approaching stock trailer drew Cutter’s attention away from Teague’s sketch.
He glanced up to see Parker County Chief Deputy Roger Smith arrive with five saddled quarter horses in a twenty-foot gooseneck.
Smith was a slightly bowlegged man with thinning hair under a sweat-stained hat.
Like Cutter, he wore brown Wrangler slacks and a white cotton shirt with long sleeves and pearl snaps.
Smith climbed out of his one-ton dually and gave a curt nod to Cutter.
He hitched up his gun belt, the basketweave holster containing a shiny blue Colt Python.
Many of the young bloods coming on the job opted for semi-auto pistols—but, like Cutter, Smith clung to his wheel gun with a sort of religious devotion.
The chief took off his hat and dabbed the sweat off his forehead with a crumpled red bandanna.
“Blue northers in the winter, killer floods in the spring, and now this sweltering shit.” He replaced his hat and shoved the handkerchief in his pocket, squinting up at the sun. “Weather guessers say it’s supposed to top a hundred and five today.”
Lafayette Johnson piped up. “My mother says it sounds like endtimes.”
“It sounds like Texas.” Smith grunted. “That’s what it sounds like.”
“Same, same,” Cutter said.
The chief waved his hand in a circle over his head. “Let’s get this show on the road before this blasted sun torches us to a crinkle. I’ll ride that gray there with a butt like a barmaid. Cutter, you take your pick of any of the others.”
Smith, a longtime Parker County rancher, had grown up with the sheriff. He wasn’t one to name his horses, any more than he named his tractor or pickup. It was easier to call them “the gray” or “the blood bay” or “that bastard who’s always opening the gate.”
Lafayette Johnson gazed longingly at the stock trailer. A manhunt on horseback was the stuff of every Texas lawman’s dream.
“How about we let the kid ride,” Cutter said. “I don’t mind posting up at a roadblock.”
“Nope,” Smith said, matter of fact. “I want your eyes on the trail.”
“Got it,” Cutter said, all too happy to sit a horse.
“Anyhow, I told DPS I’d loan ’em LJ for a bit,” Smith said.
“They need someone to ride shotgun on their helicopter.” He leaned in, as if to confide a secret to Cutter.
“Get a load of this: Their plan is to leapfrog from farmhouse to farmhouse by air. LJ and Trooper Teague will bail out and clear each place while the chopper hovers overhead. They’ve got a Texas Ranger sharpshooter totin’ an M16 on board to pop our outlaw if he flushes out the other end with bad intent. ”
Cutter took off his hat and ran a hand through his stubble of blond hair, moist with perspiration in the morning heat. “Has anybody actually identified the suspect?”
“If they have,” Smith said, “they haven’t told me.” He looked at Johnson. “You think you can keep from shooting some poor farmer who decided to skip church this morning?”
“I won’t let you down, Chief,” the young deputy said.
Smith chuckled, swinging open the gate to his stock trailer.
“Sure you will,” he said. “Everyone lets me down at some point.” He stepped up and patted the big gray on her rump, smooching to let the animal know it was time to unload, then he climbed out of the trailer and turned to face the young deputy.
“Just refrain from shootin’ anybody who doesn’t need to be shot. Can you do that for me?”
“Wilco.” Johnson nodded, smiling like a puppy.
Cutter had done more than his share of jumping out of choppers during his time with Special Forces, but if anything came close to a manhunt on horseback, it was deploying house-to-house from a helicopter.
Ten minutes later, while Cutter was adjusting the stirrups on his saddle, sheriff’s posse volunteer wives showed up with sandwiches and more insulated jugs of iced tea.
Cutter topped off his canteen and grabbed a ham sandwich.
He wasn’t particularly hungry but didn’t know when he’d have the opportunity to eat again, so he stored the sandwich where he’d been taught to store food—in his belly.
A greasy ham and mayo stuffed in sun-heated saddlebags all day was only slightly less dangerous than getting shot.
Fed and watered, Cutter checked the chamber on his old lever-action Winchester rifle and then slid the .
30-30 into an empty saddle scabbard on a stocky little grulla tied alongside Chief Smith’s stock trailer.
He threw a box of twenty extra rounds of ammunition in his saddlebag.
The lawmen were sure to be bushwhacking at least part of the time, especially if Cutter found any tracks.
He grabbed a can of bug dope from the trunk of his car and hosed himself down.
Everything in Texas seemed to stick, stink, or sting.
Ready to go, Cutter pulled the quick release bank robbers knot on the lead rope and walked the stocky grulla away from the trailer.
The mouse-colored horse was one of the more cantankerous of Smith’s string, but there was trotter blood somewhere in its pedigree.
Cutter’s back and knees would appreciate the smooth, ground-eating gate by the end of the day.
Smith turned in his creaking saddle with the resigned groan of an older man who knew exactly what he was getting into. He gave Cutter a nod.
“?Listo?”
“You bet.”
“Better if you take point,” Smith said. “Me and the others will flank you and sing out if we cut anything that looks like sign.”
Cutter led his horse from the spot where Trooper Teague had seen the last definitive track.
Chief Smith rested his arms on top of the saddle horn and smirked. “You planning to walk all the way?”