CHAPTER VITHE LONE HERD
“AND I’ll bet this is the sorriest herd of cows that ever was made on the soil of Texas!” There was grief in the tones of old Jim Nabours as he turned away from the dusty flat where the circling riders were holding the main body of the T. L. gathering. For many days the men had been riding mesquite thicket, timbered flat and open glade, sweeping in the cattle in a general rodeo for the making of the trail herd. This was the result.
“About one in ten of what we’d orto of had, and what she still thinks she’s got,” he added, speaking to his own trail segundo, bearded young Del Williams, as they pulled up and looked back at the cattle.
Williams nodded.
“It’s been a system,” said he. “Some one’s stripped the whole upper range. We’d orto had fifty riders instead of ten—and not a Mexican in the lot—to ride the upper water fronts. I got my own suspicions.”
“And me. But what’s the use? The war come and we couldn’t help it. But even if cows wasn’t worth a damn we ought to of knew how many we didn’t have. Till now, I never really did.”
Williams nodded. A tall, well-favored youth he was, with the gravity of the returned soldier. He still, fault of better, wore the Confederate gray. His garb was worn and patched, like that of the foreman.
“They robbed that range after the old man was killed and afore we-all got here in charge. For over two years Del Sol was let plumb alone. Laguna del Sol! Best range in Texas, and the onliest place in all Texas that ain’t boiling over with cows right now! Fours? Long threes? Beeves? How could we pick? We was lucky to get what we did, even with quite some few that don’t show T. L. any too damned plain.
“Oh, there’s over four thousand head,” Williams went on; “four thousand three hundred and forty-two is what we made it when we tallied ’em in. But sufferin’ snakes!”
“Uh-huh. There’s steers there that looks like old Colonel Cortés in the face—bet there’s a thousand head that dates back beyond the Spanish Conquest. There’s yearlings here is ten years old, and the rest perportionate. Spring calves and fours and threes and laws knows what—that’s one fine outfit to drive a thousand miles, huh?”
“Well,” said Williams soberly, “we got to tell the boss we just made it mixed, so’s’t she could suit every buyer. And damned if I don’t think she could—unless’n a buyer wanted a even lot of good fours for beeves.”
“Of course,” assented Nabours. “If only she wasn’t so hard to fool and so sot in her ways!
“Is the new chute ready?” he asked, settling back into the saddle as he uncoiled a leg from around the horn. “We’ve got to get ’em in the road brand.”
“The boys got the wings done this morning,” replied Williams. “It won’t take forever to put our Fishhook road brand over the T. L. But I’ll bet a horse there’s mossy horns in there’ll brand as hard as a tarrypin, and calves that’ll take two to hold the brand.”
In a lesser flat, a couple of miles from the home corrals, new corrals and a branding chute had hurriedly been put up by the T. L. hands for the quicker process of working the trail herd. The material was mesquite posts set deep, with cross poles lashed on with hide. A nail was a thing unknown. The two men rode along the fenced lines approvingly.
“The sher’f’s a cow hand, all right,” said Nabours. “Just how he finds time to quit the sher’f’s office is what he ain’t explained, no more’n a lot of other things. But cows he does know. He’s coming in now.”
The rider who approached them from the farther side of the flat was not easily recognizable as the same young man who had ridden alone into the Del Sol gate a fortnight or more ago. His garb now was the loose wool of the average cattle hand of the place and day, his checkerboard trousers thrust into his bootlegs. Chaparajos he did not now wear, nor did any Saxon Texans when they could avoid it. There was at that time no standardized cowboy, nor any uniform for him. Indeed, the very name of “cowboy” was unknown on the lower range. The Del Sol ranch hands were for the most part sons of neighboring ranches, most of them lank, whiskered, taciturn young men, and for the most part seedy of apparel. They came in what garb they were able to get, and they utterly lacked uniformity, beyond the fact that each could ride, rope and brand, and all were able to live on food that would have killed men less hardy.
One of such company might have been Dan McMasters now as he plodded forward, mounted on a stoutgrullaof his own string—a blue-crane horse such as would sometimes be seen in any large remuda. He had appeared at Del Sol a week earlier than he had promised, but had forbidden the men to announce him at the house. He had lived with the cattle hands, and wished his presence to be unknown, he said, until after the herd was on its way. All for reasons which he did not declare.
He was taciturn and mysterious as ever to Jim Nabours, and the latter also grew chary of speech. Low as his own resources were, it did not wholly please him that, stacked up in two newly arrived trail wagons near the home corral, were supplies enough to run the outfit through to Abilene. It pleased him no more that if the Del Sol remuda now carried under its own road brand another brand, that brand should be the McMasters Circle Arrow, which was ranged in Gonzales County, far below. Del Sol had never borrowed, never been obliged.
“Amigos! Caballeros!” McMasters waved a hand as he drew near.
Del Williams looked at him in silence, nor was Nabours at first much more communicative.
“Well,” he said at length, “that there bunch of cows is what we call our trail herd. I expect they’d all hold still and let us brand ’em standing. The boss don’t suspect nothing but what this here herd is all select fours. Well, let her think so. Grass is up strong here, and we’ll not ketch it as we move north. So let’s push this here Noah’s-ark outfit into the pens and get it in the Fishhook soon’s the Lord’ll let us!”
“Well, we’ve all done our best,” commented McMasters.
Nabours looked at him dourly.
“Ef we wasn’t broke,” said he, “you couldn’t of done as much as I’ve let you. Anyhow I didn’t take all the beans and molasses you sont up—there’s half in your wagon yet, and I want you to send it back home. Besides, I won’t take no wagon from you; we got our own carts, and them’s good enough. Horses, now—why, yes, I’ll take the loan of them, fer maybe you can sell ’em north. I don’t want to hit Aberlene with a bunch of sore backs. Ef you got some horses, anywheres, why, there you are; but ef you’ve et up all the chuck, why, where are you? We maybe couldn’t never pay that back—I don’t know. So you jest send you own wagon back home while you got it.”
“Well, all right,” replied McMasters, slightly changing color. “You know, of course, I’m not pushing anything on you. I don’t want your employer to know anything about it. And I know you-all have done your best.”
“Yes, I reckon we have. We’re not hardly leaving a hen wrangler at Del Sol—taking the whole force and family and most of the furniture, down to Miss Taisie’s trunk. Buck Talley, our Senegambian chief, he’d of died if he hadn’t got to go on as cook. Milly can drive one carreta, and old Anita don’t know nothing better’n to set on the seat of a carreta and talk Spanish to them oxens. Ef we don’t make Aberlene it’s because there ain’t no Aberlene. Here we come, forty-five hundred cows, ef ye don’t mind calling ’em that, sixteen more or less human cow hands, nineteen kinds of rifles and six-shooters, a hundred and fifteen saddle ponies and the only red-headedest boss in all Texas, which is a girl. God bless our home!
“Speaking of hair, did either of you-all ever notice Miss Taisie’s sort of hair?” he demanded, suddenly turning.
McMasters made no comment. Del Williams only looked at Nabours.
“Well, you see, her hair is plumb long and plumb straight, except at the far end it curls up, like a drake’s tail. You see that? You know what that means? Well, any woman that has hair like that can practice magic. I read that in a dream book oncet. Them sort is witches, and it’s no manner of use trying to stop ’em. That’s what the book said. Living along twenty-two year with Miss Taisie, taking out three I spent in the war, I’m here to say the book didn’t tell no lie. So here we all are, sixteen fools that can’t no ways help theirselves, all along of the boss having that kind of red hair that curls up on the end. Well, like you say, we all done our best. I can’t look fifty horses and two wagons of grub in the mouth—not yet.
“Del, ride back and tell the boys to throw the herd all closter to the road chute. Let’s get as many as we can in the iron before she gets too dark to work. We’ll put half at roping and branding on the flat and the balance can work ’em through the chute.”
The three turned toward the dust cloud where the main herd was held by the men. A rider was coming out, top speed.
“Hello!” began Nabours. “What’s a-eating him?”
The horseman drew up his mount squatting, throwing up a hand—old Sanchez, all his life a Del Sol rider, and the only Mexican allowed to go with the trail herd.
“Pronto, Señor Jeem!” he called. “Los hombres—baja!” He pointed to the herd.
“What hombres, Sanchez? What’s up?”
“Los hombres—they cutta our herd!”
“Cut our herd—what’s that?”
“Read-a our brand—cutta our herd. They say-a we gotta theirvacas. They goin’ take!”
“Cut our herd? On our own ground. Not none! The man don’t live that’s going to cut a Del Sol herd without my consent and my help. Come on!”
He set spurs, rode through the thin fringe of mesquite that made the shortest path.
“Come on, McMasters!” he called across his shoulder. “I want you for witness here!”
But as he and his two riders burst free and spurred down the slope to where the great herd was made he looked back, not hearing hoof beats. McMasters was not with them.
“I’ll be damned!”
Nabours smothered the remainder of a volley of hot-headed oaths. He did not understand a man who sidestepped when he was needed.
CHAPTER VIITHE HERD CUTTERS
NABOURS, Del Williams and old Sanchez spurred down the saucerlike flat in which the Del Sol herd was held. They arrived none too soon.
A party of six strangers, all armed, were engaged in argument with as many of the Del Sol men, who had ridden between them and the edge of the herd. The plunging of the horses and the loud voices began to make the wild cattle uneasy. Other riders were doing all they could to hold the herd from a run, which might have been precisely what the intruders desired. Their leader, a heavy-set, dark-bearded, handsomely dressed man, spurred out to meet Nabours, who came straight in and with no ceremony jerked his mount almost against him.
“Who are you, and what do you want here?” he demanded angrily. The stranger coolly turned.
“Since you ride up and ask,” rejoined he, “we’re cowmen, and we want our property.”
“You’re no cowman!” hotly retorted the old foreman. “Else you wouldn’t be hollering and riding around the aidge of another man’s herd. What you trying to do—start our cattle back in the brush again? Your property be damned! Get on away from the aidge of our herd while you got time!”
The numbers of the Del Sol riders, thus increased and led by a determined man, impressed the brusque stranger; but he did not lack assurance.
“You buck the law, friend?” said he. “I’ve got certified records of eight brands, and powers of attorney from the owners to comb any herd going off this range. We’re taking no chances.”
“You’re taking damned long chances if you keep one more minute where you’re at,” remarked Jim Nabours. “Git back now, if you want to talk this over!”
He spurred between the strangers and the herd, threw the weight of his horse against the nearest rider, his eye never leaving the leader’s eye, and his hand always ready. His men followed him, pushing straight into the others. Any second a half dozen men might have been killed.
“Come on, boys!” called the bearded leader suddenly. “Pull off till I tell this fellow what’s what.”
They reined off, confused, a hundred yards or so one side; but Nabours clung against his man, knee to knee.
“You can’t tell us nothing!” said he. “You can’t cut a critter out of this herd! You can’t look at ary brand we got! You savvy?”
“I savvy you’re running a right high blaze, neighbor. You reckon you’re above the law?”
“Damn the law! The law ain’t got in here yet. Ef it had, our range wouldn’t of been skinned by a lot of lowdown thieves that wasn’t above robbing a girl when her own men was away. I’ve knowed all this year that our range was skinned. What cows we got we need. We’re a-going to trail ’em all north, jest like they lay, and no outfit’s going to cut that herd, law or no law. ’Tain’t no cow thieves is going to work over a brand in our herd, or even look at one.”
“You can’t hang that on me! Cow thieves?”
“I do hang it on you, and it goes! You look like a cow thief to me, and act like one. You come from Austin, but you never was raised in Texas. Pull out or we’ll work you over, and do it the old way!”
The two bands, about equal in numbers—for the bulk of the Del Sol men dared not leave the held herd—now faced each other, roughly divided by a line constantly changing as the horses shifted and plunged. Every man was armed. The insult had been passed. The smile on Nabours’ lined face, showing his snarling white teeth, the scowl on the face of the other partisan meant now only maneuvering for the first break. None of the stern-faced group thought of anything else. Eye watched hand. Revolvers lay itching and corded nerves were taut above them. Each man waited for the break.
The thunder of hoofs coming down the slope at their rear made a new factor. Jim Nabours dared not lift an eye to see who or what it was. He had to watch the other man’s eye, his hand. But the voice of old Sanchez rose, calling to the newcomers.
“Pronto, capitan! Vien aqui, pronto! Pronto!”
The intruders whirled, not daring to begin an encounter with new assailants at their rear. The crisis was broken.
Now Nabours saw five men, splendidly armed and mounted, who swept on, spurring. They wore the riding-garb of the newly reorganized Texas Rangers, that strange constabulary of the border soon to make more history of their own. A beardless boy, apparently their lieutenant, led them now.
“Hands up, you men!” commanded he.
The five men were halted in line, their perfectly broken mounts steady. A repeating carbine of the new Spencer type was in the hands of each, and each of the five had a man covered, his rifle leveled from his own waist.
“Sanchez, throw their guns on the ground!” ordered Nabours suddenly. The young lieutenant nodded.
“Don’t move, any of you, or we’ll have to shoot.”
Quietly he sat his motionless horse while the old Mexican, dismounting, walked to each saddle of the herd cutters and, drawing out each rifle, threw it and the man’s pistols in a heap on the ground.
“What does this mean?” demanded the burly leader of the invaders, still blustering. “We’re here peaceable. We’ve broke no law. We’re only after our own property that these men are about to drive out of the country.”
“Back to Austin!” replied the armed youth tersely. “If there’s a court left worth the name I’m going to get justice for you some time, Mr. Rudabaugh.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?” rejoined the ruffian. “We got papers to take up cows in these brands. Looky here. Don’t you never think you can hold up a state officer of Texas! I’ll have you damned rangers disbanded!”
“All right,” replied the youngster. “We ain’t disbanded yet.”
“But look here!”
The leader produced from the long tin case at his cantle a series of papers purporting to be brand descriptions and authorizations. The impassive young lieutenant shuffled them through, his rifle across his saddle.
“Yes?” said he. “Brands? What brands? Gonzales County? How old is the Six Slash E in Gonzales?”
“Twelve years,” asserted the chief of the interlopers.
“You’re a liar, Mister Treasurer,” smiled the boy. “There isn’t and never was any such brand in Gonzales. I think your names are forged. What are you doing in here, so far south?”
The partisan showed a sudden perturbation in his eyes.
“Well, who are you?” he demanded. “You seem to know mighty much for a upstart. I tell you, I’ll have you and your robbers all disbanded!”
“Never mind! I just happened to meet up with these other boys. You ride along as far as Austin and rest your hat there a while. We’ll see what the court says, if there are any courts now. You’ve worked this range long enough and close enough.”
The youth never lost his calm.
“You’ll wish you’d never pulled this sort of play with me!” flared Rudabaugh. “I’ve got friends——”
“Yes, the state treasurer does have friends. Don’t you steal enough that way, in your river-improvement ring and your other deals, without coming away south to rob a girl? What grudge you got against her or against her family? I wouldn’t let you cut that herd if I knowed it was full of brands besides the T. L.”
“You’re getting out of your depth now, young fellow,” sneered Rudabaugh. “What’s more, this is Caldwell and not Gonzales. You got no right to arrest anybody here.”
“As a state Ranger I shore have. I’m nastier to run on than any carpetbag sheriff that tallies in at Austin.
“Take them in, boys,” he concluded. “Work the oldley fugaif they break—but they’re damned cowards and will go quiet. Just make them ride in front.
“That’s the horse!” he added to one of his men as he rode apart and looked down on the dusty ground. “Shoe off, right front, and hoof split. They was plumb up to the gate of Del Sol.”
“Yes, and we’ll get our cows yet,” exclaimed Rudabaugh savagely, as a ranger nodded to old Sanchez, who now deftly bound each man’s feet together under his horse’s belly with a Spanish knot that bid fair to stay set.
“So?” The young rider’s smile was pleasant. “Now, how’d you all like to have back your guns and an even break, you to begin right now to cut that Del Sol herd?”
“I know there’s cows in that herd that ain’t in the T. L. Brand.”
“Well, they’ll all be in our road brand before sundown two days,” cut in Jim Nabours now. “You lying, low-down dog, I wish to God these boys hadn’t came! There’s only one way to handle people like you. Git out of jail—and come back! That’s all we hope.
“McCullough, do you want any more men?” he added.
“Why?” The youth laughed and rode away. “Fall in there, prisoners!” he commanded. “Ride for the ferry trail. I wouldn’t try to ride too fast.”
“Oh, we’ll be back!” called the gang captain, defiant still.
“I certainly do hope you will!” replied Nabours fervently. “I’ll come all the way back from Aberlene, ef I ever get there, just to be around here when you-all do come!”
A chorus of jeers and curses came back from the prisoners. The Rangers said never a word, but herded their men on ahead.
Jim Nabours jerked up his mount—a sign to the herd riders, and the latter swung away, glad enough to have the herd still under control. The animals began to edge out, to thin, to spread, to graze. Old Jim Nabours rode to the edge, singing a song of his own, as he sometimes did when especially wrathful:
“Bud Dunk, he was a Ranger, a Ranger of renown,But says he to the cashier when he ride into the town.Says he, ‘I need some money that the bank here owes to me.So please to make it plenty, fer I’m broke ez I kin be——’ ”
“Bud Dunk, he was a Ranger, a Ranger of renown,But says he to the cashier when he ride into the town.Says he, ‘I need some money that the bank here owes to me.So please to make it plenty, fer I’m broke ez I kin be——’ ”
“Bud Dunk, he was a Ranger, a Ranger of renown,But says he to the cashier when he ride into the town.Says he, ‘I need some money that the bank here owes to me.So please to make it plenty, fer I’m broke ez I kin be——’ ”
“Bud Dunk, he was a Ranger, a Ranger of renown,
But says he to the cashier when he ride into the town.
Says he, ‘I need some money that the bank here owes to me.
So please to make it plenty, fer I’m broke ez I kin be——’ ”
A scattering chorus came to him, roared out of the rising dust cloud:
“Oh, please, sir, make it plenty, fer we’re broke ez we kin be!”
“Oh, please, sir, make it plenty, fer we’re broke ez we kin be!”
“Oh, please, sir, make it plenty, fer we’re broke ez we kin be!”
“Oh, please, sir, make it plenty, fer we’re broke ez we kin be!”
CHAPTER VIIITHE FISHHOOK
“CUSS take the law!” fumed old Jim Nabours. “I never seen nothing but trouble come out of law. Ef it wouldn’t of been for them Ranger boys we’d of killed Rudabaugh and his outfit right here, and that’d of ended the whole business. Courts? They own the courts; they’ll all be out and at it again inside a week. Ef they meet up with us again I shore hope there won’t be no Rangers. When come it a cowman can’t take care of his own cows?
“But come on, now, Del, push ’em over to the new pens; we got to work this Noah’s ark right now.”
Nabours and Dell Williams slowly edged out a string of cattle, making a point. Swing men rode gently somewhat farther back; others pushed in the stragglers. Quietly, efficiently, with the long skill of men who all their lives had “savvied cows,” they broke the compact mass into a long-strung-out line, traveling quietly in the direction laid out by the leaders. The herd submitted itself to guidance. All went well until they reached the raw new lines of the crude branding chute, when a few of the old mossy horns began to stare and then to roll their tails as though about to break away; but trouble finally was averted.
The swing men crowded and cut the front of the herd to one side of the others. Back of them others began to circle the long procession. In a few moments two herds were made on the flat near the branding pens. In half an hour three irons of the Fishhook road brand, made by Buck the cook, were getting cherry heat in the fire near the chute. Men pushed a thin line of animals out of the smaller bunch, heading them for the fences. Once in the wings, they were crowded into the V till a row of a dozen or twenty stood in single file back of the rising gate. Then, amid swaying that strained the rawhide lashings of the new fence, and to the chorus of bawls of the creatures as the hot irons sizzled into their hides, the Fishhook began to appear above the T. L. holding and owner’s brand.
“Tally one T. L. four! Two T. L. four! One T. L. yearling! One T. L. yearling! One T. L. two!” Sometimes a man would grin as he came back to the fire. “This here T. L. is the only thing I kin see on ary cow so fur!” quoth Len Hersey, top hand. “Ef it wasn’t put on right good we kin fix it some with a runnin’ iron. Keep about two straights in the fire.”
“Tally one three!” came a voice. “Say, Del, this here Fishhook is the plumb catchin’est road brand ary feller ever did see! Does my eyes deceive me?”
Laughter and jests, dust, noise, lowings and groanings, the clack and clatter of cattle moved into the wings, the smell of the herd blending with the odor of singed hair—all the old-time flavor of cattle work in the open—went on now, the thin wedge of tail-twisting, surly brutes pushed out of the chute gate increasing steadily. The nucleus of the Del Sol trail herd grew steadily, until finally the red sun fell below the distant screen of the live-oak groves.
“She pops!” said Del Williams.
“Shore she pops!” assented Nabours. “We’ll get the boss up a herd if we have to make ’em out of red dirt, way God made old Uncle Adam!
“Hello!” he added. “There’s the boss a-coming!”
Indeed, through the dust, wind-carried up the flat, there showed the white feet and front of Blancocito. Taisie Lockhart, again in her range clothing, stained and worn, her hair once more clubbed between her shoulders with a shoe string, rode up soberly, trotting close to the pens.
“How are you, Jim?” said she. “How are you all, men? Where’ve you been three days back?”
Jim Nabours wiped his face on the dirty kerchief he pulled around his neck.
“Where we been, Miss Taisie?” he answered. “Why, we been strolling around with our light geetars amid the cactus, a-rounding up the finest road herd ever put up in Texas.”
“But, Jim, we said maybe beeves—fours or long threes! Look yonder in the chute, man! There’s two fours, that’s all! The rest are twos and calves!”
“I’m Noah, ma’am,” said Jim Nabours gravely. “This here, now, is my ark. Don’t you come horning in. Of course, ef we do got a lot of she-stuff and mixed ages along of the others, how could we help it? Reckon it’s cheaper to iron ’em when you got ’em, ain’t it?”
“But you’re ironing everything, and all in the road brand, calves and all!”
“Ma’am,” said Jim Nabours solemnly, “ef we wasn’t short of hands I’d shore fire the segundo, Del Williams. He’s the onthoughtedest man I ever did see. Now look what he done, him being in a dream! I expect he done run our iron on a dozen or so that ain’t beeves a-tall! And it won’t come off in the wash! Now, how can we get it off? Miss Taisie, as the daughter of the best cowman Texas ever seen, what would you segest fer me to do with Del?”
The girl turned aside to hide a smile that made her cheek dimple.
“Well, I’ve got a pair of eyes,” said she.
“Shore you have, Miss Taisie, and fine ones, too. I wish they was different. But any good cowman has got to have two kinds of a eye—one to tell a brand fur as he can see a critter and t’other not to see no brand that he don’t want to see. Now you go on back to the house, Miss Taisie, and leave us alone, and we’ll turn in up to Aberlene, ef there is ary such place, with the damnedest, evenest, finest bunch of beeves you ever seen, every one in the T. L. and Fishhook, and all of ’em yores. God bless our home!”
He flicked at the white stripe on Blancocito’s hips with the end of his own bridle rein; whereat Blancocito sprang a dozen feet to one side—but Taisie with him, not at all concerned.
“Don’t, Jim,” she protested. “You always treat me like a child.”
“Well, ain’t you?” replied Jim. “Shore you’ll be the richest child in Texas six months from now.”
The girl reined over to where her faithful adjutant stood, led him one side. Her face was troubled.
“Jim——” she began.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Jim, what’s wrong around Del Sol? Something’s wrong!”
“What is it, Miss Taisie?”
She drew yet closer.
“Some one’s been around the house.”
“What? What’s that?”
“Some one’s been in the house! I don’t know just when. You know my little old trunk—I mean the Spanish-leather box with the big hinges?”
“Why, yes, ma’am. I seen it a hundred times in the front room—seen it just the other day.”
“It was in the front room. It isn’t there now.”
“What? What you telling me, Miss Taisie?”
“It’s gone! I missed it to-day.”
“What all was in it?”
“Some things of my mother’s; laces, you know, a silver comb, pictures—and some clothes. That’s almost all, except a lot of old papers. There were bundles and bundles of my father’s old land scrip. He was always buying it, as you know; no one could stop him. He said it would be worth something some day.”
“Miss Taisie, he said right! He told me that land would be worth five dollars a acre in Texas some day; maybe even ten. He said a beef four’d bring twelve dollars here on the Texas range. He said he was going to buy land, all he could get, at five cents a acre, while he could. And he’d of got a heap more in his pasture if he’d lived. And his trunk of scrip——”
“By my mother’s grave!”—the girl rose to her full height in her stirrups, in a sudden tempest of wrath, her right hand high above her head—“I swear I’ll make the drive for him—and her! I swear if I ever find the thief that came in my house I’ll live for my family’s revenge, and for that alone!”
“Jim, they’re robbing us! I know that herd! Do you think I’m blind! Don’t I know cows? Yon’s the leavings, the trimmings, of the Del Sol range! All right! We’ll drive the leavings. My word and my life for it, I’ll be only a man now till all these things are squared! Will you stand by me?”
“You ort’n to ask, Miss Taisie.”
“Jim, now listen! I want every corner of the bunk house searched, every tent, every wagon, every jacal, before we start north. If we find the box we’ll know what to do.”
A Paramount Picture.North of 36.“JIM, WE’VE GOT TO DRIVE OUR HERDS NORTH—IT’S OUR ONLY SALVATION.”
A Paramount Picture.North of 36.“JIM, WE’VE GOT TO DRIVE OUR HERDS NORTH—IT’S OUR ONLY SALVATION.”
CHAPTER IXTHE TRAIL
AN EMPIRE in embryo lay threading out vein filaments, insentient, antenatal—Texas, not having an identity, not yet born, but soon to be a world. What a world! How rich a world!
Above, for two thousand miles, nigh a thousand miles right-angled across the needle’s path, swept another unknown world, the Great West of America, marked till now only by big-game trails and pony paths and wagon tracks. The road to Oregon was by then won. The iron rails that very year bound California to the Union. But nothing bound Texas to the Union. Unknown, discredited, aloof, a measureless wilderness herself, she did not know of the wilderness above her, and until now had cared nothing for it.
In this central part of the great, varied state the grasses grew tall, the undergrowth along the streams was rank. The live oaks were gigantic, standing sometimes in great groves, always hung with gray Spanish moss. Among and beyond these lay vast glades, prairies, unfenced pastures for countless game and countless cows. It was a land of sunshine and of plenty.
A cool haze, almost a mist, lay before dawn on the prairie lands. Now, when morning came on the Del Sol range, a sea of wide horns moved above the tall grass. With comfortable groans the bedded herd arose one by one, in groups, by scores and hundreds, stretching backs and tails. The night riders ceased their circles, the cattle began to spread out slowly, away from the bed ground, a little eminence covered with good dry grass and free of hillocks, holes and stones, chosen by men who knew the natural preferences of kine.
A clatter of hoofs came as the young night herd—the boy Cinquo Centavos, vastly proud of his late promotion—drove up his remuda to the rope corral. A blue smoke rose where the cook pushed mesquite brands together again. It was morning on the range. Aye, and it was morning of a new, great day for unknown Texas and the unknown West that lay waiting far above her.
The two great trails—that running east and west, that running north and south—now were about to approach and to meet at a great crossroads, the greatest and most epochal crossroads the world has even seen. Here was the vague beginning of a road soon to be bold and plain; almost as soon to be forgotten.
Slow and tousled, men and boys kicked out of the cotton quilts which had made their scant covering, each taking from under his saddle pillow the heavy gun and such hat as he had. Few had need to hunt for boots, for most had slept in them. Bearded, hard, rude, unbrushed, they made a wild group when they stumped up to the morning fire, where each squatted on one knee while using tin cup and tin plate. Cutlery was scanty, but each man had some sort of knife. Sugar there was none, but a heavy black molasses did for sweetening to the coffee, which itself largely was made of parched grain. A vessel of great red beans had been hidden in the hot ashes overnight; there was plenty of bacon aswim in the pans for spearing; and of corn pones, baked before the fire, many lay about. Of this provender Buck, the negro cook, made them all free by his call to “Come an’ git it!” Of the regular chuck wagon of the well-appointed later trail outfits, of the rough but better abundance, there was no more than faint prophecy here in the rude high-wheeled Mexican cart. In truth, the Del Sol outfit was poor, bitterly poor. Here was anoli-me-tangereassembly of truculent men whose adventure into unknown lands bordered close upon the desperate.
Of the later accepted costume of the trail and range, there was no more than indication. The hats were a dozen sorts for a dozen men. The neck scarf of each man above his collarless tow shirt was a scanty plain red bandanna, for use, not show. Spurs, saddles, bridles, boots—these things were good, for the Spanish influence lingered in Texas a generation after the “dead body of Coahuila” had been shaken off. The saddles were heavy and broad of horn, each with double cinches. The stirrups were without exception covered with heavy tapaderos. The reata at each horn was thin, of hide close braided, pliable, tough as steel. Of chaparajos, or leggings, as these men always called them, perhaps a half dozen pairs were owned by older men; the young could not afford them. Now, freed of the necessity of riding chaparral in the round-up of the herd, the leggings were cast into the cook wagon along with the ragged bed rolls. So now they stood or kneeled or squatted, coatless, collarless, unbrushed, belted and booted, without exception thin, almost without exception tall, each with his white-and-black checkered pants in his boots, his garb light, insufficient, meager. They were poor.
But of good weaponry these men of the border were covetous. The older men had each a pair of the army Colts—cap and ball, for fixed ammunition was not yet on the range. His pistol flask, his little cleaning rod, his bag of round balls, each man guarded with more care than his less weight of coin. The rifles were nondescript as the men themselves. One man had a revolving Colt rifle, a relic of the New Mexican expedition of ’42. Of the new Henry rifles, repeaters, many had found their way thus far south; and of the heavy Sharpe rifles, such as were used by Berdan’s sharpshooter corps in the Civil War—with the great Minié ball and its parchment cartridge and the lever breech action—a half dozen survived. Most prized by some, execrated by others, were the Spencer repeating carbines, throwing their heavy ball with at least approximate accuracy if one could guess the distance of the shot. The Yager and the Kentucky rifle, which won Texas, now had disappeared. The first trail men had yet to wait seven years before the Winchester and the Frontier Colt ushered in the general day of fixed ammunition. The first wild cavalcades of the Texas trail certainly were unstandardized.
Of the Del Sol men, all alike were silent now. Jim Nabours, a long leg bent up, knelt over his plate on the ground. Del Williams, bearded, young, comely, sat on a cart tongue. Sanchez, old and gray, was under the cart itself. Cinquo Centavos, name and family unknown, called Sinker by his fellows, slim, eager, boyish, stood as he ate, shivering in his cottons. A reticent, ragged, grim, unprepossessing band they made, ill matched and wild as the diverse cattle which now began to edge out from their bed ground.
Nabours, shutting his jackknife and putting it in his pocket, paused as he saw a man ride out from the cover of the mesquite. He knew him—McMasters, who had not been seen since the affair of the Rudabaugh herd cutters.
“Huh! There’s Gonzales at last! He’s powerful searchy about his work.”
McMasters came in, the last at the fire, and was hardly welcomed. About him hung still the indefinable difference that set him apart from these whose lives were spent in the saddle, and this now had grown intensified. He was dressed as they were, but his garments fitted better, he was neater, trimmer. His eye, gray and narrow, was calm, his tongue silent as ever. A slow ease, deliberate, unhurrying, unwasting, marked his movements. Still he seemed with them, not of them, and they held their peace of him.
“I ask your pardon,” he said at length to Nabours, “but you see, I’m a cow hand and a sheriff both. I had a little business overnight. I’m ready to make a hand now if I can.”
“Well, we’re ready to pull out,” replied the foreman. “Del, didn’t Sanchez tell you the two carts was ready?”
“Si Señor,” nodded his segundo.
“Old Milly went to bed in hern last night, to get a good start, she said,” volunteered Len Hersey. “She taken her old Long Tom musket to bed with her. You see, enduring the war, Milly’s husband, Tom, he done jine a Yankee nigger regiment and never did come back home a-tall. That’s how come Milly to go north—she’s lookin’ fer Tom. ‘Ef Ah ever kotch sight’n dat nigger,’ says she, ‘Ah sho gwine blow out his lights fer him.’ ”
“Well, don’t let Milly talk war too much, so’s to spoil her cooking for the boss,” said Nabours. “They’ll make a separate camp. Put Anita on Miss Taisie’s cart, for when she gets tired of the saddle Milly can ride in the cook cart.”
“Is Miss Lockhart really going?” asked Dan McMasters suddenly.
“She shore is going. I told her to pull out late in the morning from the big house and follow our trail. Lord help the girl! There ain’t no woman belongs on a fool trip like this here one.
“Move ’em out, boys,” said he at length, quietly. “Mr. McMasters, I want you on point, with Del Williams.”
And so, unemotionally, there began one of the wildest and strangest journeys ever made in any land.
Under the ancient art of handling cattle, known to each of these men, the herd began slowly to move. McMasters and Del Williams, a couple of hundred yards apart, gently threaded out the farther edge of the loosely grazing cattle, along whose flanks a dozen hands sat loose in saddle, ready to take their appointed places on swing and drag. A few old steers, rangy, tall, wild, sunburned, trotted out ahead—the natural vanguard, pacemaking, electing itself then and there, and holding place for a thousand miles. The point almost formed itself, as should be; for the art of trailing cattle was to use their instincts, not to alter them; to follow them and not to crowd them; to let them feed and travel, and never to take a back track on the road.
Gently, intoning a comfortable bar or so now and then, the swing men spread and gently pushed additional numbers back of the front wedge. The column began to form, to stretch, loose, indefinite, not close packed, stopping, hurrying, turning to look back, lowing, no set purpose having yet been developed in the vast band. A pair of swing men, no more, must serve to control each three or four hundred head of cattle on the march.
The rangy vanguard were kept moving out, heading north, still on their own native range. Soon they struck a steady walk, in which they were encouraged.
“Roll along, little dogies! Roll along, roll along!” chanted Len Hersey, on the head swing, as the great motley herd got form.
Far at the back came the unhappy drivers of the drag—the old, the maimed, the halt and the blind, steers bowed down with weight of woe. Here were gaunt cows, heavy with young, calves newborn trotting with their dams, all in a vast pastoral hegira.
Young Cinquo Centavos, hustling his caballada together, wailed in a high thin treble. “Neeter, Neeter, Wah-a-hah-neeter, ast thy-y-y so-o-oul ef we mus’ part!”
Came shufflng of hoofs, crack and creak of joints, rattling of wide horns not yet shaken down into good spacing in the march. At times the great remuda, a hundred and fifty head of saddle stock, would thunder off in a brief side break, and Cinquo must cease in his appeal to Juanita. Forsooth, to his young soul Juanita was a tall maid, of red hair that curled up only at the ends.
In less than an hour after they first moved, the lone herd of Del Sol was made and trailed. Sinuous among the tall grasses, it rolled out and on, northbound. It made a vast historic picture, in a vast forgotten day; a day when a new world was made and peopled overnight.
Jim Nabours rode ahead of the herd as general guide and forelooper. From his place, a half mile in advance, he turned back in his saddle, looking at the long cloud of dust; the rolling sea of backs, the pale swing of wide horns above. His fierce soul exulted at the sight. He shut his teeth, his eyes gleaming, as he faced north and settled down into a plodding walk.
Ten in the morning, and the last of Del Sol’s drag, little calves and all, misfits, ignorant mistakes and all, had rabbled off and away, sore under the fly-bitten road brand fresh on every hide. The dust cloud was hours old at the upper edge of the flat, when at the opposite edge, on the rim that divided the flat and the big house of Del Sol, another and lesser dust cloud appeared over the broken turf.
It was made by two rude two-wheeled carts, each drawn by a double span of oxen. The roughly spoked wheels, stiffened by slats lashed on with rawhide thongs, emitted shrieking protest at each revolution on the axle. Each carreta had a tilt of canvas stretched above its rough bows, and each had certain cargo. On the front seat of the first vehicle sat old Anita, brown and gray and wrinkled. The rear cart was handled by a vast negro woman with a long musket at her side—Milly, as usual grumbling to herself.
These two women, old beyond love and life, doggedly loyal, passionately affectionate, made the bodyguard of Anastasie Lockhart, educated and dead-broke orphan, setting out into the world at twenty-two on one of the most impossible adventures any woman ever knew.
Just now Anastasie Lockhart, trousered, booted, gloved and hatted like some slim, curiously eye-arresting young man, rode alone on her crossbar, Blancocito. Her mass of heavy hair was down her back, burned tawnier beyond the shade of the sombrero. Her eye moody, she gazed on ahead at the procession that held every friend she had on earth and every dollar that she owned.
She dropped back and rode alongside the leading cart.
“Anita,” she said, “if I only had my stolen trunk, I’d not be leaving a single thing on earth behind me!”
Anita vouchsafed nothing for a time. She understood English.
“Tronk?” said she presently. “What-a tronk,señorita?”
“The one that was stolen from my parlor—you know very well what one.”
“That-a-tronk? He is not stole. He’s back. I setta on heem now.”
“What? What’s that, Anita?”
“Si, Seguro.I gotta heem under seat, serape on top. Sanchez, my man, he bring. Las’ night he got heem back.”
“The lost trunk? Where? Where did he find it?”
“Sanchez, he look in waggone, he look in corral. In one waggone, come from Gonzales, he find-a thees-a tronk. Sanchez, he tak-a heem and put-a heem in here. You like-a heem, dose tronk?”
The hand of Anastasie Lockhart fell lax at her saddle horn.
“Anita, tell me, was it in his wagon—Mr. McMasters’, the Gonzales wagon that went back yesterday? Was it in the wagon of Señor McMasters, the sheriff of Gonzales?”
“Oh, si!”
“Ah!” A long sighing breath.
“Vamenos!” exclaimed Anastasie Lockhart after a long time. She looked straight forward, not turning, as one who left a used-out world behind.