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ruthless determination in the man. There was a perverted sense of pride in being associated with the kind of power Boston held. Loman Janes was content to be the brawn to Boston’s brains. He knew Boston needed someone as closemouthed and merciless as he was to carry out his plans. In Loman’s mind, they were a team. Boston gave the orders and he took them, but they were dependent on one another. The more powerful Boston became, the more powerful Loman became by association.

4
    There were no trails in the brush country of Texas. There wasn’t any room for trails. The brush grew in a dense thicket, defying the passage of man or beast and choking to death the prairie grass that had once covered these millions of acres of Texas land.
    It was downright unfriendly country, with every plant baring its forbidding set of clawlike thorns and needle-sharp spines. Among the scrubby mesquite trees dominating the landscape grow the palo verde, its green-black thorns more visible than its leaves, and mounds of prickly-pear cactus. There’s the catclaw that the Mexicans call “wait-a-minute,” a much more descriptive term, as anyone snared by its thorns would testify.
    No one claimed that God had a hand in making this black chaparral. It was said He gave the land to the devil as his playground.
    The short-tempered and sharp-tusked javelinas called it home, as did the rattlesnake. No horse and rider ever rode the thickets without the constant company of a rattler whirring its warning. There wouldn’t have been any reason to venture into the brush if the cunning and wild Longhorn cattle hadn’t hidden themselves in it.
    The hardy Longhorn wasn’t much to look at; flat-sided, narrow-hipped, with a swayed back and big drooping ears, it was a caricature of a cow. The long, sweeping set of horns that gave the breed its name would normally span four feet but they were rarelystraight. One tip might point down and the other up. They drooped, twisted, and spiraled in unusual convolutions. The Longhorn came in all colors: washed-out earth colors, dull brindles and blues, duns and browns, and drab clay-reds—solid, speckled, or spotted.
    Slow to develop, a Longhorn didn’t reach its maximum weight of eight hundred to a thousand pounds until it was eight years old or better. But the tall, bony beast could travel for miles, fight off wolves, bears, and panthers, endure the droughts and blizzards, and adapt to the wildest land and roughest climates.
    So cowboys penetrated the thorny ramparts of these boundless thickets in search of maverick cattle that belonged to anyone who was man enough to catch them and drive them out. Cowboys fought the vicious brush country, cursed it, and acquired a healthy respect for it.
    With Shorty Niles riding beside him, Benteen walked his line-backed dun horse into a sparse section of the chaparral. It was late afternoon, time for one last sashay through the area before they lost the light. Two days before, they’d spotted a couple of cows with yearling calves in this vicinity, but they hadn’t been able to put a rope on them. Benteen wanted to make another try for them.
    Winter was the best time to search these thickets. The sharp-edged leaves had fallen, enabling a rider to see farther. The weather was cooler, so horses could run longer without becoming wind-broken, and there was less chance of cattle dying from overheating.
    Cow hunting in the brush country required clothes and equipment that offered the most resistance to the thorny vegetation. The leather chaps protecting Benteen’s legs were smooth and snug, without any ornamentation that could be snagged by a prickly branch.
Tapaderos
hooded the stirrups of his saddle to prevent a limb from poking through to gouge his boot or prod his foot from the stirrup. His jacket fit snugly around his shoulders, ribs, and waist, leaving no loose folds tobe snared by the spiked brush, and his hat was lowcrowned.
    Benteen wore