Chapter 15: The Gather

The snow came at us sideways.

It came out of the black timber in a long, hissing wall.

The lights on the riders behind me went soft and then went out.

I couldn't see Tonka's ears.

I could feel them, though, through the reins. Up. Forward. Working.

"Wolves down," I said into the radio clipped at my collar. "Everybody. Wolves down and let your horse find the trail."

Sixteen clicks came back.

Then one more, from way at the back of the string.

"Copy, boss," Rance said. "It's dark back here, if anybody's wondering."

Somebody laughed on the channel. One of the Bridger boys.

Then a Jessup voice, older. "Cut the chatter."

That was a big old Jessup wolf with a red beard. Not one of the Jessup riders had ever taken an order from me.

For eight years I'd caught their horses, shod their horses, doctored their horses, and stood back at the gate while they rode out.

Now I was out front, and every one of them was riding behind a half-blood in the dark.

I could smell it on them. Not fear, exactly. Pride, gone sour.

The first pasture was the Bench.

Six hundred head stood bunched in the lee of an aspen stand with their backs humped and snow on their faces.

They didn't want to move.

Cattle don't, in a storm. They put their tails to it and wait to die.

"Spread out," I said. "Wide. Don't push them. Let them see the horses."

The foreman's voice came back. "You heard her."

We spread out.

The horses walked into the snow at a slow, steady walk, heads low.

The cows lifted their heads one by one and looked at them.

A horse a cow knows.

A wolf she doesn't.

Every wolf on that mountain sat his horse small and quiet.

The lead cow turned.

Then the next one.

Then six hundred head were walking downhill in a long black line into the wind.

"Huh," somebody said on the radio.

By full light, if you could call it light, we had two thousand head on the trail.

By ten we had all four.

The snow was over the horses' knees in the open and hip deep in the drifts.

We went down the Owl Creek trail in a column a mile long.

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