Linda Lael Miller - The Rustler

Southern Arizona Territory
August, 1907

A RUSTLERS MOON GLIMMERED faintly in the sky, a thin curve of light soon obscured by rain-ripe clouds. Wyatt Yarbro sat a little straighter in the saddle and raised the collar of his battered canvas coat, not so much against the threat of bad weather as the intuitive sense that things were about to head south, literally and figuratively. He tugged the brim of his hat lower over his eyes as the kid rode toward him, bearing the unlikely name of Billy Justice, along with a shotgun, bad skin and a contentious attitude.

Skirting the restless herd of soon-to-be-stolen cattle, Billy drew his sorrel up alongside Wyatts paint gelding, shifted his slight frame with an easy, soft creak of old leather.

The boys are ready, Billy said, in that lazy drawl of his. You with us, or not?

Inwardly, Wyatt sighed. Thunder rolled across the darkened sky, like a warning from God. Turn your horse and ride, cowboy, said a still, small voice deep inside him. Go now, while the getting is good.

His younger brother, Rowdy, was up north, in Stone Creek, and hed offered Wyatt a place to stay. Said he could get him honest work, help him leave the outlaw life behind for good. Still, the town seemed far away, like some fairy-tale place. Wyatt was flat broke, his horsewon in a poker game in Abilene two weeks after he got out of a Texas prisonwasnt fit for the trip.

He supposed Rowdy would wire him some money, if he could swallow his pride long enough to ask, but stealing would be easier. It was the only trade hed ever learned.

Im with you, Wyatt said without inflection.

Billy nodded. Then lets make for the border.

Wyatt assessed the sky again, watched as a streak of lightning ripped it open in a jagged, golden gash. I dont like this weather, he admitted.

Billy turned his head and spat. You turnin coward on me, Yarbro? he demanded coolly.

Ever seen a stampede, Billy? Wyatt countered, keeping his voice quiet. Young as Mrs. Justices boy was, Wyatt had him pegged for the sort who could draw and shoot without so much as a skip in his heartbeat or a catch in his breath.

The cattle, more than five hundred of them, roiled in the gulch below like water at the base of a high falls, swirling in on each other in dusty, bawling eddies of hide and horns.

Nope, Billy said, his tone blithe. Wyatt knew the kid was probably planning to gun him down from behind as soon as theyd delivered the herd and collected the loot. He wasnt afraid of a pockmarked whelp, even a cold-eyed one like Billy, but the charge in the air itself made his nerves claw and scramble under his skin.

Lets get this done, Wyatt answered, and rode in closer to the herd.

The wind picked up, howling over the bare Arizona desert like a banshee on the prowl for fresh corpses, but the gang, six of them in all, got the critters moving in a southerly direction. Wyatt watched Billy and his four riders even more closely than the cattle, making sure none of them had a clear shot at his back.

They funneled the herd through a narrow wash, raising dust so dense that Wyatt pulled his bandanna up over his nose and mouth and blinked to clear his eyes.

He thought about his brother as he rode. Rowdy, a former member of the infamous Yarbro gang, just as he was, had managed to set his feet on the straight and narrow path. Hed changed his ways, gotten himself a pardon, and now he not only had a wife and a new baby, he wore a star on his vest.

Despite the brewing storm, and his own uneasy feelings, Wyatt grinned wryly behind his bandanna. Rowdy, the erstwhile train robber, a lawman. That just proved what hed always known: life was unpredictable as hell. Right when a man thought he had it all worked out in his brain, it would twist like a rattler striking from the wood pile.