Free The Range Wolf by Andrew J. Fenady Page A

be on shorter rations, and I don’t want to hear any grumbling from any of you brush poppers. Most of us here lost a war—or so they say. This is a different kind of war, and I promise you one thing—we’re not going to lose this one.
    â€œWe’re going to make up for the time we lost today—and then some. This outfit’s going to move and keep moving.
    â€œNow you can go on singing, or turn in and get all the rest you can, because you’re going to need it.”
    Wolf Riker stuck the stub of the cigar back into his mouth, turned, and walked away.
    Pepper stood for a moment more, scratched at his beard, then limped after the Range Wolf.
    So much for Wolf Riker’s words of commendation for the day’s work well done during the storm and what followed.
    There was some grumbling among the brush poppers, none of it very audible except from Leach. He concluded by turning to Alan Reese who was nearest to him.
    â€œ. . . who the hell does he think he is?”
    â€œWhy didn’t you ask him?” Reese responded.
    â€œI’ll do more than ask . . . when the time comes.”
    â€œSure you will,” Cookie cackled. “About the time you get your third set of teeth.”
    â€œI’m turning in,” Dogbreath said. “I’ve had enough of this bullshit.”
    â€œMe, too,” said Morales One.
    â€œMe, too,” echoed Morales Two.
    So ended another day and night on the prairie.

CHAPTER XVI
    But in a way it wasn’t the end of the night, not for me. Exhausted as I was from the events and exertions of the day, as I lay on the blanket atop the still damp earth, the component my body craved and silently cried out for—sleep—eluded me, trumped by conflicting speculation and contemplation of the future—if there was a future.
    My mind, a scrambled bedlam, would not let go of the faces and events of the foregoing weeks, days, and hours.
    Christopher Guthrie, bon vivant , elitist even among the cognoscenti of New York society, wallower in the lavish comfort of a Park Avenue residence, diner at the most expensive restaurants on the continent, escort about town of assorted spoiled, but desirable debutants, attendee and critic of the city’s finest theatrical productions—including my rave review of Edwin Booth’s triumphant return to the stage as Hamlet at the Winter Garden Theatre, little more than a year after his brother, John Wilkes, had assassinated the President of the United States.
    Booth’s voice, his soliloquy as Hamlet still echoing in my mind.

    What a rogue and peasant slave am I . . .
What a rogue and peasant slave am I . . .
What a rogue and peasant slave am I . . .

    And I had become little more than a peasant slave.
    From an existence of ease, comfort, and leisure, to the fierce, pitiless society of quasi-civilized vulgarians—Cookie, Leach, Dogbreath, French Frank, and Latimer—to name the worst, most of them dregs of the Confederacy, now without country or conscience, commanded by the most forceful, contradictory character it had ever been my misfortune to come across.
    Instead of being shanghaied on some hell-ship, it was my plight to be conscripted on a desperate, dirt voyage, with a cargo of thousands of recalcitrant cattle, facing God knew what odds; Indians, border raiders, and very likely, a mutinous crew, to say nothing of the shortage of supplies due to an angry sky.
    Sacks of beans, flour, and coffee left behind in the mire of a vast expanse called Texas.
    Texas—in my mind I tried to visualize a map of Texas, of where we might be now, and of where we were going—names and places I had heard the drovers mention—The Brazos, Illano Estacado, Panhandle, Staked Plains, Dry Tortuga; but they might as well have been talking Chinese, and we might as well have been in China.
    Somewhere along the way there had to be at least an outpost of civilization. If not a city or village—a fort, or