Free Chancy (1968) by Louis L'amour Page A

sound. They were a good thirty yards off, but he nailed them both, drawing fast and smooth. I saw Hacker exchange a glance with his nephew. That was shooting, by any man's standards.
    The first man into camp started a fire, and on this night it was me. Breaking some branches from a fallen limb, long dead, I gathered leaves and bark, and soon had the fire going. After I'd rustled some fuel, I returned to my horse to help get the herd bedded down.
    It was a tight little camp, sheltered on one side by the thick brush and trees, and on the other by a curve of the stream where there was a high bank.
    We bunched the herd tighter. The most important thing about the campsite was that it was practically invisible until a body was right on top of it. Nevertheless I was worried. We had moved far, and for much of the distance we had covered our trail, but no trail could be covered completely, and much depended on how determined they were.
    Hacker gnawed at a beef bone, then tossed it into the brush, wiping his hands on the grass. "Chancy, you decided where you're goin'?" he asked. "I mean, have you picked a spot?"
    "I've never been to Wyoming."
    "You open for suggestions?"
    "You're damned right. I'm supposed to locate these cattle on good grass and water, get some buildings up before cold weather, and get the outfit going. Now, that's a right big order, and I'm open to suggestions."
    "I soldiered out here a few years back," Hacker said. "There's a big red wall cuts across the country, only one hole in it for miles, with a creek coming through. In back of that wall there's some pretty country, mighty pretty."
    "We'll look at it," I told him, "though we may drive on farther. But it sounds like a place I'd like."
    Long after I'd fallen asleep, I awoke and heard Cotton Madden singing "The Hunters of Kentucky." For a while I lay there, listening to his low, easy voice and watching the fire. It was then I started thinking about Kit Dunvegan, back in Tennessee.
    How long before I would see her again? How would she have changed? And how would I have changed?
    "That change," I said, half aloud, "will be considerable. There's room for it."

    Chapter 6
    A cattle drive has a way of seeming to offer no change. Day after day we moved westward, the days varying only by the distance covered, the grazing we found, and the water.
    We saw no human being, white man or Indian, and as we moved westward the grass became less and the soil more sandy. There were tracks of wild horses--many of them--and of antelope, which we saw almost every day, sometimes every hour of the day.
    We drove our cattle, sang our songs, yarned a little around the fire at night, and came to know each other. Tom Hacker was not only the best cook, but the wisest of us all; Cotton had the best voice, and was the one most likely to be joking. Jim was by all odds the best tracker and the best rider, with Cotton a close second on the riding. Handy Corbin was considered the best shot nobody questioned that--not even me.
    And there was no question about who was the strongest among us, either. My work as a boy, and then on the boats and on the freight teams had given me strength, although much of it I came by naturally.
    From time to time in the saddle I gave thought to myself. I felt I wasn't learning enough. Jim was teaching me about the grass, the plants, and the animals. What I hadn't known about tracking he was also teaching me, but what I needed was book-reading. I had an envy of those who could study and go to schools.
    Yet in my own way I had grown a little. Being the boss had given me responsibility. I had men, horses, and cattle to consider, and the future responsibility of finding a proper ranch for Tarlton and myself.
    Many a man of my age was bossing a herd or an outfit, so there was nothing unusual about that, but it does change a man when he knows others depend upon him for decisions.
    Though Corbin was considered the gunfighter of the outfit, I had killed two men, but I was not