The Drift of Smoke
Copyright© 2025 by Datuner
Chapter 2: The Offer
The place was tucked low in a basin, cottonwoods lining a slow bend in the creek, their leaves rattling in the afternoon wind like dry whispers. The house stood two stories tall, wide-porched and weathered but proud. White paint clung stubbornly to the boards. A windmill creaked somewhere out back. Chickens scattered as we rode in, dust curling under the hooves.
When we rode into the yard of the C-B spread, Charles de Graaf came down off the porch like a man walking his own land, smooth, confident, not hurried. He was maybe fifty, broad-shouldered, lean at the waist, and wore a clean gray vest like he thought someday the West would civilize itself enough to care.
Beatrice followed him, hands tucked into the belt of her riding skirt. She wore a wide-brimmed hat and looked like she belonged more on a horse than in any parlor. She was younger than Charles, maybe early forties, with dark eyes that didn’t blink much and a mouth that didn’t smile unless she meant it.
Behind them, a boy leaned on the porch rail. Thirteen, maybe. Tall and raw-boned, hat too big, trying to look like he wasn’t watching everything.
We headed over to water the horses while Moore went directly up to the house.
Charles offered me a hand as I walked up. “You must be the rider Moore talked to us about. Says you showed backbone yesterday. We could use backbone.”
I shook his hand. Firm grip. Soft palm. “Taylor Hawkins.”
Beatrice’s eyes narrowed just a little, like she was testing the name against something in her memory. She didn’t say hello, but she did nod.
“You ride for anyone lately?” de Graaf asked, already turning toward the porch steps.
“Not in a while.”
“Good. Means you don’t owe anyone.”
I followed them up the steps. The cowhands peeled off toward the bunkhouse with little more than a few glances back. Moore slapped me on the shoulder in passing, like he was already counting me part of the outfit.
We stepped inside. The front room was cool, shaded, with a Navajo rug on the floor and a rifle hanging over the hearth. Nothing fancy, but not poor either. Just the kind of place where everything had a purpose. de Graaf poured two glasses of water from a clay jug and handed me one. “We’re gearing up for a big drift. C-B stock’s been pushing up through Box Elder Pass, and the open range north’s getting crowded. Welch’s bunch are getting bold. Claiming what ain’t theirs. Same with the Hammer outfit.”
I didn’t say anything, just drank. The water was cold and clean. First real drink I’d had all day.
“We pay straight, feed’s good, horses better,” he said. “You ride a full season, there’s a bonus.”
“And if I don’t?”
Beatrice finally spoke. Her voice was low, sure. “Then you don’t. But you strike me as a man who finishes things.”
I met her eyes. “That a compliment?”
“That’s a question.”
Charles chuckled but said nothing more. He left the silence where it lay, and I figured that was his test see what kind of man I was when nobody was talking.
I set the glass down on the windowsill and looked out across the yard. Chickens pecking dust. The boy tossing a stick for the dog. My saddle still on the fence rail.
I could’ve ridden on.
But Cal Darrant was out there. And the way he looked at me yesterday, like I was some half-forgotten tune he almost remembered, that told me everything I needed to know.
This wasn’t about cattle or pay or grazing lines. It was about something that never got buried deep enough to stay down.
I turned back to them. “All right. I’ll ride.”
Charles nodded, no triumph in it. Just business. Beatrice looked at me like she already knew I would.
“Good,” she said. “We leave before sun-up. Moore will set you up in the bunkhouse.”
The day started clean and blue, a wind moving out of the south and the smell of wet earth still hanging from a night’s rain. Horses stamped in the yard. Men moved quiet, saddling up, tying on bedrolls, checking cinches. The gather was set to start at first light.
We rode out in pairs, fanning through the draws and creek bottoms. The cattle were scattered — half wild, half mean — and the brush thick from the spring. The air filled with the low calls of riders and the bawling of calves.
By midmorning, we’d pushed a good bunch down toward the flats. The sun burned off the haze, and dust hung in the air like gauze.
The easy part was done. Now we had to head deep into the back country, where the land grew rough and the cattle meaner, and start pushing the wild ones that rarely saw a man back into the open.
We stopped at the fire and had a bite, passed the coffee around, and switched our saddles to the mounts meant for the heavy brush. These horses were chosen for this kind of work — short-backed, sure-footed, and smart enough to find a line through anything. Each wore chest and shoulder guards, thick leather that let them shove through thorns and cedar without cutting themselves up.
The wind had dropped by then. It was quiet in that hollow — too quiet, the kind that makes a man listen for something he can’t yet name.
We split into small crews after that — four riders to a draw, each man taking a stretch of rough country. The sun climbed higher, a hard white coin that flattened the hills and made the rock shine.
Carter and I worked the south slope, where the brush grew thick with mesquite and juniper. Moore took the north line, and Root swung east with two of the younger hands. The cattle up there were rangy, long-horned things that moved like shadows until you got right on them.
The work was slow and loud. Branches clawed at your legs, burrs filled the horses’ manes, and every few minutes a cow would break and run, forcing one of us to circle out and bring it back. Sweat cut dust paths down every face.
Around noon, we regrouped in a shallow basin where the creek made a lazy bend. The cook wagon had come up the ridge and was setting a small fire for beans and coffee. I saw Beatrice de Graaf ride down then, her daughter Clara following a few paces behind on that paint mare of hers. The girl was laughing at something her mother said, head tipped back, sunlight in her hair.
They spoke a few words with Moore — nothing I could hear over the clatter of tin cups — then turned and rode off toward the low trees along the creek.
When we mounted again, Moore called out, “Let’s make another pass before sundown. We’ll bed down in the flats tonight.”
By late afternoon, we’d driven another twenty head into the holding pen and were bone-tired. The wind came up again, tugging at our hats and carrying the smell of cedar smoke from the cookfire.
That’s when one of the hands, young Ned, rode in hard from the south trail. His horse was lathered, eyes rolling.
“Clara ain’t back,” he said, breath ragged. “She and the cook’s boy went to run a few strays by the creek. He come back, but she didn’t.”
Everything stopped for a beat. The fire crackled, a pot lid clinked, someone swore under his breath.
Moore was already in the saddle. “You sure?”
Ned nodded. “She took the mare. Said she’d be back by dinner.”
Moore’s jaw tightened. “Carter, you take the west bank. Hawkins, the east. We’ll sweep from the bend up to the canyon mouth. Move.”
The crews broke apart like a flock scattered by a hawk.
Down by the creek, the light was fading to copper. I found the mare’s tracks easy enough — small hooves, fresh in the mud, moving steady along the bank. Then they turned into the willows, and the trail was gone, lost in the shadow.
I rode on until it was near full dark, the air gone cool and heavy. Crickets started up. The windmill back at the yard squealed in the distance.
When I finally turned back, I saw lanterns bobbing through the trees — other riders still looking. But there was no sign, no call answered, no sound except the river sliding slow and quiet through the dark.
By the time I got back to camp, Beatrice was standing by the fire, hands white around the hem of her shawl. Moore was talking low to de Graaf, who looked like a man trying to breathe through stone.
Nobody said a word when I dismounted. We all just stood there, the dust settling around us. The herd bawled out in the pens, restless, smelling the unease.
Somewhere beyond the hills, a coyote called.
None of us slept. The wind picked up after midnight, whispering through the mesquite, rattling the tin plates, carrying the sound of horses shifting in the dark. Lanterns moved across the flats like lost stars. Every hour or so, someone rode in and shook their head.
By first light, the camp looked hollowed out. Men huddled by the fire, faces gray with smoke and worry. Beatrice sat wrapped in a blanket beside her husband, her eyes rimmed but dry. She wasn’t the kind to cry in front of men.
Charles de Graaf stood when the sky went pink behind the ridge. “No sign?”
Moore shook his head. “Not a damn thing. The mare’s come in, though. Saddle empty.”
That settled over the camp like a shroud. The girl’s paint mare stood by the corral, reins dragging, flanks streaked with sweat and burrs. There was a dark scrape along her shoulder, maybe from brush, maybe not.
Charles ran a hand down his face. “We can’t leave her out there.”
Moore looked over the herd — five hundred head, restless and ready to move. “We’re already three days behind. The buyers won’t wait. We can spare half the hands to search, but the rest have to start the drive.”
Beatrice’s voice was low, sharp. “You’re talking about cattle when my daughter’s missing?”
Moore didn’t flinch. “I’m talking about the ranch, ma’am. You lose the herd, you lose the place. You lose both.”
Charles stepped between them. “He’s right. I’ll stay with the search. You take the herd north. We’ll find her.”
There was no sound for a long time except the pop of the fire.
Then Moore turned to us. “Carter, Ruben, Root, Hawkins — you’re with me. We move the herd at first light. The rest of you stay on the girl. Ride light and cover ground.”
I caught Beatrice’s eyes as she stood. There was something in them I hadn’t seen before — not grief, not fear, but a kind of steel that said she’d already buried the part of her that hoped.
We broke camp in silence. Saddles creaked, ropes hissed through hands, tin cups clinked against saddlebags. By the time the sun cleared the hills, half the men were riding south toward the canyon country, their dust rising behind them like a slow prayer.
We turned north with the herd. The wind had shifted, coming dry out of the west now, carrying the smell of mesquite smoke and something else — something like finality.
I looked back once. Charles and Beatrice stood side by side near the empty corral. She had one hand on the rail, the other shading her eyes as she watched us ride away.
Root muttered something about bad luck. Ruben spat into the dust. Moore said nothing.
And me, I just kept riding. Because sometimes the trail doesn’t wait, and sometimes it’s the only thing that still makes sense.
But the thought of that empty saddle, swinging loose on the paint mare, stayed with me all the way up the ridge and into the next country.
Behind us, the ranch fell quiet again — except for the sound of a woman calling her daughter’s name into the wind.
The herd moved slow that first day, a river of hide and horn pushing north through the flats. Five hundred head, bawling and stumbling, calves crying for their mothers in the dust. The sound of it filled the sky, a living thing, heavy and endless.
We rode the flanks, keeping the line straight, hazing the stragglers, turning the wild ones before they broke. Moore took point, up near the lead steers, his coat snapping in the wind. Ruben and Carter worked drag, coughing through the dust cloud that never let up. Root rode middle, quiet as always, one hand loose on the reins, watching everything and saying little.
By noon the sun had gone white-hot again, and the air shimmered off the sand. Sweat burned the eyes, dust stuck in the teeth, and the horses’ hides were streaked with salt. We stopped just long enough to water them and chew on jerky before pushing on.
Nights came fast out there, sudden, like a curtain dropping. The herd would bed down in a circle, heads low, tails to the wind, and we’d take shifts on watch. Coyotes called from the draws, and once, way off, I heard what might’ve been a woman’s voice in the wind. Just a trick of the dark, I told myself. Just the way the plains talked when you’d been too long out in them.
Three days out, we hit the Red Butte country, broken ridges, low scrub, and enough grass to keep the herd fed. That’s where we crossed paths with the other outfits.
First came Welch’s crew, twenty men and near seven hundred head. You could see their dust from a mile off, rolling like smoke. Welch himself rode out to meet us, big man, long-legged, a scar down his cheek that caught the sun when he smiled. He rode like someone who’d killed before and didn’t mind who knew it.
“Well, if it ain’t the C-B boys,” he said. “Heard you left half your hands home chasin’ ghosts.”
Moore didn’t rise to it. “We’ll make up the time.”
Welch grinned, slow. “Sure you will. Hope you don’t lose more than cattle this time.”
He turned his horse and rode back before Moore could answer, his men laughing low behind him.
Later that afternoon, we spotted Hammer’s herd moving along the ridge, smaller, maybe four hundred head, driven hard. Hammer was shorter, thick as a stump, with calculating eyes. He waved when he saw us, two fingers from his brim, and we gave him the same. No talk, no crossing paths. He’d worked with Welch before, that was enough to know what kind of company he kept.
The Major’s herd came in from the west the next morning. His outfit was different, tight, disciplined, men that moved like they’d all been soldiers once. The Major himself was gray and formal, clean-shaven, his coat buttoned even in the heat. He rode up alongside Moore, nodded once, and said, “You’re late.”
“Had trouble,” Moore said. “Lost a girl back home.”
The Major looked past him, out over the herd. “Then ride faster.”
That was the last he said.
For a week we moved together, three herds cutting the same line north, Welch’s men loud and reckless, Hammer’s running lean, the Major’s silent as death. At night their campfires dotted the plains like stars fallen to earth.
You could feel the tension building with every mile. Welch’s riders liked to drift close, showing off their mounts, hooting and calling across the dark. Once, one of them spooked a few of our steers just for sport. Moore warned them off with a rifle in his lap after that, and they kept their distance, but not by much.
On the seventh day, the sky changed. Clouds started stacking over the mountains, black and swollen, dragging long shadows across the grasslands. The wind shifted, cool at first, then hard, steady out of the west. The cattle felt it before we did. Heads came up, ears twitching. The sound they made wasn’t panic yet, but close.
By evening the air had turned sharp, the light gone strange, copper and green all at once. Lightning flickered out along the horizon. I could smell rain and something else, something like iron.
Moore rode the line, shouting orders. “Keep ‘em tight! No gaps!”
Ruben rode up beside me, his face streaked with dirt. “Feels bad,” he said.
“It is.”
The first bolt hit a mile out, bright and hard, the sound rolling over us like a cannon. The herd shifted, uneasy. The second strike came closer, and the third hit dead in the center of Welch’s cattle.
For a heartbeat, the whole plain went white.
Then hell opened.
The herd blew apart, bellowing, crashing, the sound like thunder in their lungs. Three thousand head between the four outfits, all breaking at once. Horses screamed. Men shouted. The ground shook under the weight of it.
I saw Moore’s hat go spinning past, a rider thrown. Ruben’s horse went down and came up bloody, kicking wild. I turned mine into the wave, yelling, hazing, anything to turn them, but it was no use. Once they start, there’s no stopping them. You just hang on and pray.
We rode blind through the rain and lightning, the world nothing but noise and motion. Somewhere behind me, Root called out, but his voice was swallowed in the storm.
When it finally broke, when the thunder rolled off and the rain came in sheets, the herd was scattered miles wide. The land was torn, the air full of steam. Horses stood shaking. Men were on their knees in the mud, coughing and cursing.
We found Root an hour later under a mesquite, his leg twisted bad, breathing hard, face white as ash. He smiled when he saw me. “Guess I’ll sit the rest out.”
I didn’t answer. Just tied off the splint, gave him a pull from the flask, and sat there till the others rode in.
The lightning had burned three head to bone and split a tree clean in two. Welch had lost a dozen steers and one man. Hammer had lost three. The Major lost none.
Moore stood in the rain, hands on his hips, looking out over the wrecked herd. “We’ll rebuild,” he said, though his voice didn’t sound sure. “We’ll push what’s left north and make the sale.”
I looked west, where the clouds were still flashing. Somewhere out there, Welch’s men were already gathering the strays — theirs and ours, no difference to them now.
But there’d been no sight of Cal Darrant.
Morning came thin and gray, the world washed clean but broken. Steam rose off the flats where the rain had pooled, and the smell of wet hide and burned ozone hung over everything. The herd was scattered, half a mile wide in both directions, the ground torn to mud and hoof-holes.
We moved slow, rounding up what we could. Men rode in silence, heads low, the horses slogging belly-deep in clay. Every so often, a steer bawled from the brush and someone would peel off to drive it back.
Root was laid out under a canvas near the wagon, leg splinted, fever high. He kept asking for water, said he saw lightning when he closed his eyes. Carter sat with him, sponging his face, not saying much.
By noon, the clouds had broken. Sunlight came down in pale stripes through the steam. We’d gathered maybe half the herd by then, the rest gone to God knew where, some north, some east, maybe running with Welch’s cattle now.
Moore sat his horse on a low rise, looking at what we had left. His hat was gone, his face mud-streaked, eyes sunk deep. “We’ll camp here tonight,” he said. “Get a count, rest the mounts. Then we move again.”
Nobody argued.
That evening, the Major’s outfit came through, neat as a parade, not a man out of line. He reined in near our fire and looked down at the wreck of our herd. “You lost more than cattle,” he said.
Moore’s jaw worked. “We’ll make it up.”
The Major nodded once, cold as rain. “See that you do.” Then he turned his horse and rode off, his men following silent behind.
Later, as the fire burned low, Ruben came in from the west edge of camp. His shirt was torn, and there was something in his face I didn’t like.
“Found sign,” he said.
Moore looked up. “Cattle?”
Ruben shook his head. “Riders. Three of ‘em. Cut north after the stampede. Might’ve had a string of strays with ‘em.”
“Welch’s men?” I asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
The wind came up then, carrying the smell of the storm still clinging to the earth. Somewhere far off, a steer bawled, and another answered.
“We’ll track at first light,” Moore said. “If they’ve taken cattle, we’ll bring ‘em back. If they’ve gone to Welch...”
He didn’t finish the thought.
We sat there awhile longer, men hollowed out by mud and loss, watching the fire sink to coals. When I finally turned in, I could hear the herd breathing, slow and restless in the dark.
And under that, just faint, the sound of hoofbeats moving away through the night.
Morning broke soft and pale again, the kind of light that hides more than it shows. The fire had burned down to ash, and the herd stood scattered and quiet in the fog.
Moore was already up, crouched over a strip of bacon on the pan, eyes distant. I poured coffee, waited for him to speak. He didn’t.
Ruben came in from checking the east line, hat low, face set. “No sign of the three riders,” he said. “But we’re still short one hand.”
Moore frowned. “Who?”
“Lynch,” Ruben said. “Ain’t no bedroll, no gear. Horse gone too.”
The sound of his name sat wrong in the air. Moore’s jaw worked, slow. “He was supposed to stay with the horse herd.”
“Maybe he did,” I said. “Maybe he left after.”
Moore looked up at me. “You saying he took cattle?”
“I’m saying I don’t know.”
He stared past us then, out toward the low hills where the mist was lifting. The sun caught on the mud flats, shining like water. “We’ll find out soon enough. Eat quick and saddle up.”
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