Providence Read Online Free

your
letters; I’m going for a hot meal.” Luke suppressed a grin, but the mirth in
his eyes was surely evident.
    “Aw, you educated city boys are
all alike. Proper meals, heck, you’ll probably be in a bath tub by the time I
git there!” Joe taunted.
    “Yeah, and you’ll be all doe-eyed
over some love letter!” Luke retorted with a grin.
     “You wait, Luke, someday
you’re gonna meet someone and be lookin’ for those letters from home like a
lovesick puppy dog, too!” Joe strode off whistling happily toward the gray
frame building that housed the post office. Luke shook his head with an
indulgent smile and turned to the new brick hotel that advertised good hot
meals for fifty cents.
    A city boy he may be, but this
life suited him far better than the schools and seminary that his father had
selected for him. It was less than a week after his mother died that he had
struck out for the Indian Territory and a new life away from the yoke of
oppression he felt under his father’s stern bearing. It had been four years
now, four long years, and still he wasn’t certain he had found what he was
searching for.
    The sun was already lowering in
the western sky. They had been on the trail for the better part of the last
month moving over four hundred head of fractious cows and steers to the new
railhead here in Addington. It was a far cry from the herds that had moved
across the Chisholm Trail less than a decade ago, but it still provided gainful
employ for men that were game to try it. Luke Josey was one of those men.
    The last month had proven a true
test of the men on this drive. They were a small band to start with, only five
punchers; the trail boss, Joe; and a cook. They faced a snowstorm less than two
days out. One of the men had taken sick and had been laid in the back of the
cook wagon. He died three days later, and was laid to rest beneath the broken
sod of the prairie. “How many men lay in unmarked graves,” wondered Luke,
“without so much as a prayer nor even a memory? Is that my destiny?”
     The remaining men had been
pressed into even greater service over the next few weeks. Freezing winds
buffeted them from the north. Every hour in the saddle seemed an eternity. They
hunkered down in their coats, wild rags drawn up over their faces and hats
tilted low against the onslaught of the bitter wind. The cattle were nervous,
milling and lowing, trying to break at every opportunity. It was all they could
do to keep them moving on. Then just as suddenly, the temperatures rose, the
snows melted as fast as they had come, and the run off swelled the rivers to
overflowing.
    By the time they reached the ford
on the Red River, it was a madly rushing torrent. They all knew that once the
herd started across they had to keep moving. This ford was notorious for the
quicksand that lay all around. They made camp, and waited two days for the
river to subside enough to make a relatively safe crossing. On the morning of
the third day, the sun shone forth from the east in a blaze of red and gold,
the river shining in the light. Joe decided that it was now or never. Luke rode
ahead with the cook wagon to meet the first of the herd as they emerged.
     The rest of the men
gathered the cattle into a tight bunch and with loud shouts and cries from all
around they ran them into the swiftly flowing waters. At first, the herd stayed
together, moving through the water to the far bank. The lead cow found her
footing on the far side and mounted the steep bank with little trouble. With
more and more cattle dragging themselves from the water and clambering up the
far bank, it was soon a hopeless mire of churned mud. A large brown and white
cow started up but slipped down, buried to the chest in the sticky black ooze.
Others tried to go over and around, cowboys shouted a warning as the cattle
began to split into two columns around the struggling cow. Others become
entrenched in hidden bogs. Luke, joined by Joe, circled the portion of the