Lone Star Ranger : A Ranger to Ride With (9781310568404) by James J. Griffin

strips
from its belly.
    “This here belly meat’s where bacon comes
from,” he explained. “Now, this ain’t been cured, so it’s not
exactly bacon, but it’ll still be mighty tasty. Help me gather some
wood and we’ll start a fire.”
    There were plenty of dead mesquite twigs and
branches lying around, so it didn’t take long to gather enough for
a fire. Once the wood was stacked, Jeb took a bundle of lucifers
from his vest pocket, broke one off, and scratched it to life on
his belt. He touched the match to some shavings, which quickly
caught.
    “I’m gonna show you how to start a fire with
just a flint, Nate, but not today,” he said. Soon the meat was
sizzling in the pan, with coffee boiling in the pot alongside.
    “Smells good, don’t it, Nate?”
    “My mouth’s waterin’ already. Sure hope it
tastes as good as it smells.”
    “It will.”
    Once the meat was done, Jeb piled it high on
the tin plates, and filled the tin mugs with thick, black coffee.
He passed a plate and mug to Nate.
    “Eat up, kid.”
    “Thanks, Jeb.”
    Nate dug into his food with relish. He
downed two pork chops and tossed away the bones before he stopped.
He started laughing.
    “What’s so funny, Nate?” Jeb asked. “Sure
hope it ain’t my cookin’.”
    “No, it’s not that at all. I was just
thinkin’ what my ma would say if she saw me sittin’ here eatin’
with my fingers. She never allowed that. Said it was uncivilized,
and we weren’t barbarians, so we always had to use a knife and
fork. I think the food tastes even better, eatin’ it like
this.”
    “It probably does,” Jeb agreed. “I’ve always
thought food tastes better out in the wide open. Eat up so we can
hit the trail.”
    The meal was finished, the plates, mugs,
frying pan and coffee pot washed out in the spring and tucked back
into Jeb’s saddlebags. When they remounted and started off once
again, Jeb pointed out a disturbed patch in the wall of vegetation
lining the sides of the trail.
    “Nate, remember what I said about a Ranger
needs to observe everything? See those broken branches over
there?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Take a closer look. Tell me what you
see.”
    Nate studied the opening carefully.
    “There’s some long black hairs hangin’ from
one of the branches. Also a small scrap of red cloth.”
    “You’ve got good eyes,” Jake praised. “Those
hairs are from a bay or black horse’s tail, or mebbe a blue roan or
dark gray, even a buckskin or dun. And the cloth was torn from a
shirt. A man rode outta the brush here. You can tell he came out
rather’n went in by the direction the branches are bent and
broken.”
    “A rustler?”
    “Possibly, but more likely a brush-poppin’
cowboy chasin’ a stray longhorn or some mavericks.”
    “Brush-poppin’?”
    “It’s an expression that comes from the
sound a horse makes when it crashes through the scrub chasin’ a
cow. Kind of a poppin’ sound. Anyway, it don’t make no nevermind to
us. Those broken branches are already wilted, so whoever was here
is long gone.”
    Jeb spurred Dudley into motion.
    ***
    Jeb and Nate rode until just before sunset,
when Jeb called a halt alongside a shallow creek which fed into the
San Saba.
    “We’ll stop here for the night,” he said.
“Plenty of grass and water for the horses, and sundown’s not that
far off. It’ll be dark soon.”
    They dismounted.
    “Now I’m gonna show you how to care for your
horse the right way,” Jeb said. “Get your brushes and the hoof pick
out of your saddlebags. And remember, you always care for your
horse before yourself. Always.”
    “Okay, Jeb.”
    Nate dug the currycomb, dandy brush, and
hoof pick out of his saddlebags.
    “Put those down for now and unsaddle your
horse.”
    “Okay.”
    Nate took the saddle and blanket from Big
Red’s back.
    “You stand your saddle on end, like so, so
it’ll dry out underneath,” Jeb explained. “Hang the blanket from a
branch of that oak. If there wasn’t a tree handy,