The Crack in the Lens by Steve Hockensmith

show him.
    After that, alas, it was a breakfast of general store crackers and jerky, and then we were riding off for the Lucky Seven on mounts rented from a local livery. It felt good to be putting San Marcos behind us for a while, though our departure clearly wasn’t permanent enough to suit some: As we trotted by the railroad depot, we passed Milford Bales himself chatting with the station agent, and the marshal stared at us with such open revulsion I had to look down to be sure we’d remembered to put on our pants.
    I tipped my hat.
    He curled his lip.
    Given all the ill will coming our way lately, some serious slinking seemed in order. So though there was a well-trod trail to the outlying ranches, my brother insisted we ride along the San Marcos River, which bubbles up out of springs just north of town.
    While it’s fed by the occasional stream as it winds its way south, the “river” rarely lived up to the name its first few miles. It seemed no deeper than your average bathtub, and in some spots was so narrow I could have stood with a foot on each bank. About four miles south of town, though, the San Marcos joins up with the Blanco River, and the water not only widens considerably, it picks up some foamy white. Here my brother steered us to the southwest, and we left behind the lush green undergrowth and looming trees lining the river in favor of craggy, hilly grassland.
    After that, we gave the horses our heels, and not just because we no longer had to watch for coiling vines and low-hanging branches. We were out in the open, exposed, and a man with a Winchester or carbine could pick us off with ease.
    It wasn’t long, though, before this open country started to close in as it has everywhere else out West: with a lot of barbed wire. We’d reached the fence line of a big and obviously busy spread, for cow-smell was in the air all around us. Which meant cow boys would be all around us, too. It was October, time for the fall roundups, and those beeves wouldn’t be leaving the summer pastures of their own free will.
    “This it?” I asked.
    “Yup. The Lucky Seven.”
    My brother had a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes as he took in the rolling meadows on the other side of the wire. He seemed to be as much in the past as the present just then, though whether the memories he was reliving were happy or sad, I couldn’t say.
    A flurry of movement ahead jerked him back to the here and now—and jerked our hands to our holsters. It was no bushwhacker, though, and the both of us relaxed…a little.
    A family of turkey vultures was tucking into the mangled carcass of a calf just over the fence, cleaning up after a wolf pack’s midnight snack. As we passed by, they screeched and flapped up into the sky, barely getting above the treetops before circling back to their banquet again.
    “Well, that’s a good sign,” I said.
    “How so?”
    “They didn’t start followin’ us . Speakin’ of which, I been wonderin’—what kinda reception we gonna get at the Seven, anyway? Ain’t no one in town baked us a cake yet. You really think it’ll be any better out here?”
    “Depends. I got along good with the boys in the bunkhouse. The superintendent, too. The straw boss, though…” Gustav sighed. “Let’s just hope he finally took a hoof to the head.”
    “He have something against you?”
    “Yeah. Mostly that I thought he was a stupid son of a bitch…and told him so before I lit out the last time.”
    “Christ, Brother,” I said with a laugh. “You burned more bridges than Sherman.”
    “Maybe, but all we need’s…” Old Red twisted around in his saddle, looking back. “You hear that?”
    “Hear what?” I said—which surely answered the question.
    “Get in the brush,” my brother snapped.
    I turned to look back, too.
    We’d been rounding a low, flower-dappled rise, and up above it I could see, just for a second, the flutter of big, black, flapping wings.
    Something had startled the buzzards