Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,71

to men I talked to in Cheyenne, rustling is getting to be a big problem down in Colorado and Wyoming. It won't be long before they come our way."

"We can handle them," Ben answered, patting the six-gun on his hip.

"Maybe so, but I'm going to hire even more men next year for the drive. Shelby Preston wants me to bring an extra five hundred head next summer, twenty-five hundred total."

"Ah, those city people back East, they're getting a taste for good beef, huh?"

The question came from Sven Hansen, a Swede Luke had hired after the man had given up in the gold fields around Helena, the new name for Last Chance Gulch. It was one of the few gold towns that had survived and was still thriving. Most of the men who worked for Luke were men who had given up their dream of getting rich by finding gold. Some miners had found the precious metal but could not afford to mine it properly. Others had died at the hands of angry Sioux Indians who wanted the white men off their land.

Ben Garvey was one of those ex-miners. He was Luke's top hand now, and a close second was a quiet but rough-looking dark-haired man simply called Tex, who rode out ahead of the rest of them now, taking turns with Runner in scouting for any trouble that might lie waiting for them. Tex appeared to have some Mexican blood, but he never talked about his heritage, family, or where he had come from. He had arrived at the ranch one day looking for work. At first Luke had not trusted him. He suspected the man was wanted for some crime back East. But Tex had proved to be extremely talented in breaking horses, as well as in using a rifle. He was hard but dependable, a man who did not hesitate to pull a trigger when necessary. Out here, especially on cattle drives, that was the kind of man Luke needed.

He had also brought young Billy Sacks on the drive, wanting him to learn the ropes. Billy, twenty-three, had come to Montana with his then-seventeen-year-old wife, Anne, just last year. Both were orphans from the Civil War and had come west to forget the horrors of that war and start a new life. Billy thought that by working for Luke, he could learn the things he needed to know about settling in this country, and Luke had promised him that if he did a good job, he'd let him have a prime piece of property on his own land eventually, so that Anne could continue to live near Lettie. He well understood the strain of loneliness for a woman in this country. Maybe Anne wouldn't have to suffer that pain as intensely as Lettie had those first couple of years.

Billy was the only married man he had brought on the drive. He had left the rest of the married ones at the ranch, hired another six extras, all single men, for the cattle drive. Single men had less mental distractions to keep them from concentrating on the cattle, and they were more willing to put their lives on the line in times of danger. Most of the extras had stayed on at Cheyenne once the cattle were sold and were someone else's responsibility; but two, Cade Willis and Bob Dolan, were returning with him to the Double L.

They were all good wranglers, dependable men he could trust. He looked down at his saddlebags, stuffed with money paid by Shelby Preston, a buyer from Omaha. He'd got four dollars a head for his two thousand steer; eight thousand dollars. He'd heard in Cheyenne the army sometimes paid up to six dollars a head. With new forts being built in Montana and northern Wyoming because of a new campaign against the Sioux, he figured he'd see about getting a government contract to sell beef to the army, which would in turn help ensure that he could continue to use government land for grazing.

It wouldn't be long now before he could build Lettie the biggest, finest home in Montana. He smiled at the thought of it, but those thoughts were interrupted when Tex came riding back to them at a gallop.

"Some men camped on the other side of the hill," he told Luke. "They've got a good-size campfire going, and it looks like they're roasting something over it."

Luke and the rest of the men followed him to the crest of the hill,