Waltzing With Tumbleweeds Read Online Free Page B

over bare rocks. He intended to hire the tracker as his skinner.
    Two hours later, he disgustedly found the old man passed out on the ground thirty feet from the brush arbor where his wife Red Bird sat sewing. When he rode up, she never looked up from her stitchery.
    “Is Blue drunk?” he asked.
    “He’s always drunk,” she said noncommittal as Mulky dismounted.
    “Well, I need him to track down a buffalo.”
    Red Bird looked up. “You drunk too?”
    “No, there’s one left. A cowboy saw her last week down near the Frances Mountains.”
    “Was he drunk?”
    “No,” Mulky said amused at her stubbornness. “I think one still lives.”
    “What you want Blue for?”
    “To track it down for me.”
    “His brain is too whiskey soft. He never find it.”
    “I brought plenty of coffee.” he said handing her the pouch. “There’s a thousand bucks riding on who ever finds her.”
    “You bet that much?” she asked.
    “Two-fifty is all I bet. But I want to win it.”
    Red Bird nodded in understanding. “We make him sober.”
    But sobering Blue was a tougher job than Mulky imagined. It was past midnight before they returned to Rosarita’s. He did not want Red Bird to come along, but decided in the end she might help him keep Blue sober.
    Mulky hurried around getting up his mules and loading panniers on their backs. He hated the gyp-tasting water from Rosarita’s well, but there was no time to go elsewhere to fill his kegs.
    The short Comanche looked hung over in the campfire’s light when Mulky shook him to awareness. Quickly, Mulky turned away and averted his gaze. He could never stand to look straight at the cross-eyed buck.
    “Why did you bring me here? What do you want?” Blue grumbled.
    “I told you ten times last night. For you to track down the last one for me.”
    “Track what?”
    Mulky threw his hat down and nearly stomped on it. This whiskey-soaked devil had used up his last thread of patience.
    “Blue,” he began tersely, “in a half an hour, we’re going to ride the winds for the Frances Mountains and you better find her for me.”
    Blue shook his head. “No more buffalo.”
    “One left and we’re going to find her,” Mulky vowed.
    “Eat. Be light soon and time to go.” Red Bird interrupted their argument by shoving each of them a tin plate of hot cakes sweetened with sorghum.
    At sunup, Mulky warily studied his field of opponents. Measles had hired a skinny boy mounted on a ewe-necked bay. Ike’s helper was a Mexican that lived nearby. The Latin rode an unspirited Indian pony. Big Dee sat on his bay with his legs bunched up because the stirrups were too short. The man’s Kiowa wife was mounted on a nervous colt. Mulky considered the giant’s chances of finding the buffalo as less than the others. But blind luck was not to be overlooked, even for the slow moving big man and Mulky knew such people had found greater fortunes without skill.
    A stiff wind was whipping up dust when Ike fired off his pistol and the contest began. The “hee-yaws” and the thunder of hooves revealed a real horse race as they left out.
    But in a half hour, Mulky pulled up his pony, satisfied he would shortly kill him. He settled for a jog. Besides Blue and Red Bird, who led the pack mules were a full mile behind. Wryly, he considered his outfit scattered worse than a widow woman’s children.
    Mulky had lost track of the others too. Nothing out there, but a vast alkali flat stretching for miles and miles. The tufts of stunted grass were chalk-coated with nary a tree anywhere.
    “Dead Wolf Springs,” Blue announced when he rode up. “I had a vision.”
    Somehow, Mulky did not trust the alcoholic Indian’s capacity for fortune telling. Blue’s brain had, for too long, been pickled in post rot gut. He did wonder though if the man’s daydream had even a hint of accuracy.
    “How far away are these springs?” he finally asked.
    “Long ways.”
    “There’s no sense killing our horses,” Mulky said,