CHAPTER XIN DAYS OF OLD
“WE got ’em going!” called Jim Nabours, riding back to his men. “Keep ’em moving! Push ’em hard for the first day, so’s they’ll be tired and sleep good. Look at them long shanks walk! I’ll bet that old dun coaster that’s done elected hisself head leader has got horns six feet acrost, and ef he’s ten year old he’s a hunderd. Well, anyhow, he’s on his way north.And-a-lay, old Alamo!”
“He knows about as much where he’s going as we do,” said Del Williams, whom he had addressed.
“Shore he does, and more. I come from Uvalde, where it’s plumb wild. I was raised on squirrel and corn pone, and all the learning I got was out the little old blue-back speller. But my pap done told me that since Texas taken most of the earth away from Mayheeco, Uncle Sam, he’s had about six government surveys made a-trying and a-trying to find whereat is the one hundredth meridian, and likewise how far north is 36-30, so’s they can tell where Texas stops at. They can’t not one of them people agree even with hisself where either of them places is at. Them surveyors don’t know no more’n that claybank steer. Trail? There ain’t no trail. We’re lost from the first jump, unless’n that steer knows. There wasn’t never no Chisholm Trail nowheres, and I can whip any man says there was. I didn’t read of no such thing in the blue-back speller. But I allow, give me a good North Star and a dun steer, I kin find Aberlene ef there is ary such place.”
“Oh, we’ll find a trail,” replied the younger man. “I’m telling you, there is a trace called the Chisholm Trail north of the Red River. You can get to Baxter Springs that way, or to Little Rock, and I reckon to Wichita; and Aberlene’s north of Wichita somewheres. There’s grass and water all the way through.”
“All trails is alike to a cow man,” assented Nabours. “My pap said all trails was begun by horse thiefs. My pap come west into Texas from Louisianny. He come over the Trammel Trace, from the prairies west. Injuns made that, but it didn’t get nowheres. Injuns, horse thiefs, whisky peddlers—I reckon that’s about how the cow trails started. What they call the Chisholm Trail runs up to the Arbuckle Mountains. That’s where we’ll hit the reservation Indians. They’ll all want beef—and whisky.
“There’s a road up from Santone to San Marcos and Austin, so I reckon we’ll head up Plum Creek and strike in north over Cedar and Onion. Ef there is a trail we’ll find it. Ef there ain’t we’ll make one. Foller that dun steer—he knows where Aberlene is at.”
Wheeling and riding far at one side of the scattered herd, the foreman rode to the rear, where the cows and calves were straggling on. His drag on that side met him—Sid Collins, flap-hatted, tobacco-stained.
“Corporal,” said he, “we got more cows now’n what we had at breakfast. They’d ought to be riding mostly on a rawhide under the cook wagon, but that nigger says if we put ary ’nother calf in his cart he’s gwine fer to quit right now. Milly’s so big she fill up the hull carreter; and besides, old Sanchez and Aniter has got it plumb full of chickens.”
“Calfs, huh? Well, now, that somehow hadn’t seem to come to my mind none, about calfs. How many new ones you got?”
“Six. Not big enough to brand, but big enough to bawl. An’ we got six cows on the prod, follerin’ the cook cart, so’s the cook he’s afraid to git offen the seat. Ef this here now keep up, we’ll have half the herd in the cook cart and the other half follerin’, lookin’ for war. I most hatter shoot one cow right now. We got to hold the remuda way back. Miss Taisie’s behind that, even, with the other cart.”
“Tell Miss Taisie to ride front, where she belongs on her own cows, son.”
“I segest that, but she won’t,” said the troubled cow hand.
“Does she know who’s riding point?”
“Shore! I told her.”
“And she wouldn’t come?”
“No.”
Nabours shut his lips grimly; then, as usual when in trouble, broke out into song: “Oh, granny, will yore dog bite, dog bite, dog bite? Granny, will yore dog bite, dog bite me?”
“Leave me shoot all them calfs, Mr. Nabours,” urged Sid Collins. “They kain’t walk, an’ they ain’t wuth a damn. Then the cows’d behave.”
“It’s what we shore orto do,” agreed Nabours. “They hold up the herd. But we need every critter we got. Maybe we’ll find somebody to trade ’em to fer something.”
“Why don’t we cut back all the she-stuff an’ on’y drive steers, Mr. Jim?”
“Because ef we left a cow or a calf on Del Sol this spring, by fall neither’d be on our range. As well as clean it and let it take a chance as have thieves do it for us. No, ef our calfs die, I’m going to die ’em as fur north as I can. Yes, and ef ary one of ’em dies I’m going to run the T. L. iron on him after he dies—and, yes, the Fishhook road brand over that—so’s’t the buzzards’ll know whose stock they’re a-eating of! My good Lord! . . . Oh, granny, will yore dog bite, dog bite——”
He rode on back, through the thinning dust. The two carts were still a mile behind. He could see the white-band horse ridden by the mistress of Del Sol.
There were sixteen men on the T. L. herd. Sixteen loved Taisie Lockhart in sixteen ways, save for the one element of fiercely reverent loyalty. This grizzled old foreman loved her as his child. His brows narrowed, his grim mouth shut tight under the graying beard as he approached the slender figure which came on, facing her great road into the unknown.
“Push on up, Miss Taisie,” called Nabours. “Yore place is at the head. We’ll see nothing hurts ye.”
“I don’t want to ride front,” replied the girl. “You’ve got men enough there. Who’s riding point besides Del?”
“Mr. Dan McMasters is on left point, Miss Lockhart,” said Jim Nabours quietly.
“Oh!”
“Well, he’s been over the road north, anyways—the onliest one of us has. He’s a cowman. So fur, I taken him fer a square man. Not that I care a damn fer a hand’s morerls. He may be a horse thief, but jest so he don’t steal from us I don’t care.”
“Suppose a hand did steal from us.”
“I never did hear of no such thing!”
“Jim, listen! I’ve found my trunk.”
“No! Where at?”
“Sanchez found it in the—well, the McMasters wagon that went back to Gonzales this morning. We’ve got it in our cart now.”
Nabours looked far out over the gray and green of the landscape a long time before he ventured speech. His face then was sad.
“I’ve knowed men shot for less,” said he at length. “But are you sure? Do you know who done it?”
“I haven’t seen anything. I only know what Sanchez says. None of my men stole the trunk. It meant nothing to them. The land scrip in it might some day mean a fortune to a man who did know about such things; and he did know it was there; and he did say that there’d be a boom in land and cows in Texas in less than ten years, maybe five.
“Well, we Lockharts always did open our doors. We thought the world was honest!—It’s hard for me to doubt—to doubt—him.”
Downcast, she rode on. It was long before Nabours made comment.
“Miss Taisie,” said he at last, “there can’t no man rob you and get away with it. Us men won’t have it. After supper I’ll be back at yore camp. I’ll have with me my left-point man. I’ll have besides my segundo and Sanchez and six of the best hands of Del Sol.”
“What do you mean to do, Jim?”
“Mean to do? You ast that, and you a cowman, and daughter of one? I mean to hold a court, that’s what I mean to do. What us fellows decides is right is what’ll happen. It’ll happen soon.”
“But, Jim”—the girl was suddenly pale—“we’d have to take any—any suspected man to Austin. And he’s a sheriff himself!”
“Austin be damned, ma’am! Likewise, sher’f be damned! Del Sol runs her own laws. That man’s father and yores was friends—until the war. Then they wasn’t so much, maybe. Calvin McMasters was a Yankee sympathizer. We don’t know it wasn’t him that killed yore father. But there can’t no man rob Burleson Lockhart’s girl and get by with it!
“We’ll try him fair,” he added. “I’d never of believed it. This shore does hurt.”
“It hurts, Jim. He was our visitor. Did he eat—with you boys?”
“He shore et. We taken him in. He done broke the one law of this country.”
CHAPTER XITHE COURT ON THE TRAIL
THE sun swung low. Nabours rode back, addressing his point men impersonally. “We bed on the slope, yon. Let ’em water full.”
As the cattle quenched their thirst the men quietly pressed them to the left of the route, urging them one side, blocking further progress. The half-wild cattle seemed to know that here, on high, smooth ground, breeze-swept and dry, with good mattress not only of new but old grass, they could get a good night’s lodging. They grazed, slowed down, and the men held them till they should bed down for sleep. Over four thousand cattle, of all ages—too large and too mixed a body for good trailing—now were by way of forming good trail habits.
But Nabours left the herd and spoke a time with Del Williams, five other men of his oldest. Together they rode to where Dan McMasters sat his horse, idly watching the cattle in the cool of evening. They rode so silently, so grimly, that a shadow of menace must have lain before them. Without a word the tall, slender figure whirled his horse to front them. Like a rattler, he always was on guard. His elbows nearly level with his hips, his two hands touched his guns.
“Yes, gentlemen?” McMasters spoke quietly.
“Better drop the guns,” said Nabours, also unagitated. “There’s six of us.”
“There’s twelve of me,” said Dan McMasters evenly. “You wanted me?”
“Yes. Drop yore guns on the ground.”
“Don’t any of you make a move,” was the other’s reply to this. “I don’t know what you mean.” Both guns were out.
“We came to arrest you, for trial, to-night, now. That’s my duty.”
“Nabours,” said McMasters, slowly, at last, “I ought to kill you for that. But I’ve got to have this clear.”
“Give up your guns and stand fair trial. We’ll make it clear.”
“No man lives who shall touch my guns. But who brings charge against Dan McMasters, sheriff and ranger and deputy marshal of the United States? What sort of mean joke is this?”
“It’s Miss Taisie Lockhart brings the charge,” said Nabours.
The young man flinched as though struck.
“What charge?”
“Theft; stealing from a friend; stealing from folks that has fed you.”
Slowly the black muzzles drooped. With a movement as deliberate as their withdrawal had been swift, McMasters thrust both guns into their scabbards, unbuckled his belt and hung it over his saddle horn.
“Has she sent for me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll come.” McMasters spoke as though with difficulty.
Nabours pointed to a little fire whose smoke arose at the edge of a clump of cover a quarter of a mile away; a small tent, two white-topped carts making an individual encampment, apart from the trail cook’s mess. Without a word the accused man, his head slightly dropped forward, rode toward the fire, both hands on the pommel of his saddle, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
Anastasie Lockhart came from her little tent at the call of Nabours. Her hands suddenly were clasped at her throat as she saw the tall figure among these other stern-faced men. It was too late for her now to reason, to withdraw her charge.
“We brung in the man,” announced Nabours. “You are the judge. We’ll hear what he has to say.”
A strange, inscrutable quality was one of the singular characteristics of Dan McMasters. His face was a coldly serene mask now as he stood beside his horse, looking straight at the tall girl who stood, woman in spite of her man’s garb, her men’s surroundings. If any emotion could be traced on his face it was a shade of pity, of great patience. Concern for his personal safety seemed not to be in his mind. This indifference to danger, this calm, did not lack effect. The men who guarded him suddenly wished they were well out of it.
“I a judge? No! I’ve nothing to say,” Taisie choked.
“Yes, you have had something to say, and you done said it to me,” rejoined Nabours. “You started something and you got to go through with it. Set down there on that bed roll. You got to tell us all what you told me. As owner of this herd, you’re the main judge. There can’t nobody shirk no right and no duty here.
“Set down here, prisoner. It seems to me you’d orto give up your weapons to the court.”
“I’ll give Miss Lockhart anything on earth but my guns,” said McMasters evenly. “No one touches them but me.”
“I reckon no man here is scared to do what he’s got to do,” remarked Nabours simply.
McMasters made no reply. He never had a hand far from his revolvers. He seated himself now so that he could face all his accusers, flat on the ground. His buckled pistol belt lay over one leg. An exact observer must have noted that the toe of one boot rested inside the farther end of the buckled belt, so that proper resistance would be offered in case their owner should snatch at the butts of the heavy guns, both of which were turned ready for convenient grasp. So he sat, facing the jury, facing his Portia—facing what was a far worse thing than death itself to any man of honor.
They were a jury of his peers, as nearly as might be, though he had had no hand in their selection. Had he known all the histories of these men he might have challenged for cause Del Williams, trail segundo, who rode right point. He had heard a man or two pass a rude joke or so, although he did not know that as Del Sol ranch hand Del Williams, ten years her senior, had known Burleson Lockhart’s daughter from her infancy. The way of Del Williams’ love was silence and reverence. But Del Williams was of some chivalric strain. That now was to be proved. That his most dangerous rival was this prisoner he knew perfectly well by the primal instincts of man; and now came a certain test.
“Del,” began Nabours, turning to his lieutenant as next in authority, “tell us what you know about this man since he come to our house.”
“I don’t know anything at all,” answered Williams slowly. “Ef I did I wouldn’t tell it.”
His thin, brown-bearded face was set in quiet resolution. Talebearer he would not be. His fellows looked at him stolidly.
“Ma’am,” went on the prosecutor, “you told me yore trunk was stole out of yore parlor. It had papers in it—land scrip, God knows how many sections.”
“Yes, I missed the trunk.” Taisie was very pale, her voice a whisper.
“Mr. Dan McMasters, did you ever see that trunk? I hate to ask you.”
“Oh, yes; I did.”
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know. It was open, close to me, where I sat in the parlor. I saw some lace, some women’s gloves, or mitts. I didn’t look again.”
“Did you see it after that?”
“Yes.”
“Where was it?”
“Near the gate—outside the gate, in the edge of the brush. I thought it odd it should be there. I was sure I’d seen it up at the house, the only time I was in the house. You were there.”
“Shore I was! She said all her father’s land scrip was in that box; we all said it’d be worth money some day to any cowman. You heard it. You knowed where the trunk was and what was in it.”
“Yes; so did you.”
“Then why did you put it in your wagon that was going back to Gonzales.”
“I did not. That is either a mistake or a lie.”
“But it was there. Sanchez found it there. He taken it and put it in Anita’s carreta. It’s there now. We declare that to you. It was missing from the house. It was found in yore wagon. Yore wagon was going back home. That was right where some men was laying up in the brush when you left. You didn’t let me foller them. You didn’t show up when them same men—we proved by the split-hoof track—was trying to cut our herd. Only the Rangers saved that. Ef you’re a Ranger, why wasn’t you there?”
“I’ll not have any man ask me such questions.”
“Don’t tell us what you’ll have or won’t have. You’ll have what we give you, no more, no less. Explain how come that trunk in your wagon. Not a man on Del Sol except you and me knowed what was in it or where it was. Now who done put it in yore wagon? It looked right easy to sneak that south while we was going north, huh? And it with half a million acres in it.”
“How come him to bring ary wagon up here anyhow?” demanded Cal Taney, a top rider on Del Sol.
“I wouldn’t ask him that,” said Del Williams quietly.
“But I do”—retorted Nabours.
“Well, I had some supplies, you know,” answered McMasters. “A wagon goes better than a cart. You said you didn’t want my wagon.”
“A wagon carries trunks or boxes better.”
“Yes.”
“Shore! Was you planning fer a load both ways—what you’d kerry in a wagon from Del Sol?”
“You may guess,” said McMasters, suddenly dull red. “Most of you have guessed.”
“We have!” asserted Nabours. “Miss Taisie, ma’am”—he turned to the white-faced girl—“this here is hard for you. Del won’t talk and won’t vote. The rest of us thinks the trunk and wagon is not explained. Am I right, men?”
Four men nodded. Del Williams, gentleman in rags, sat staring straight ahead. The gray eyes of Dan McMasters were fixed on the pale face of the woman whom now he knew he had loved since first he saw her, would always love. What price?
“We’re the jury, ma’am,” said Nabours. “You’re the judge. It looks to us like all along the McMasterses was Yankee sympathizers. It looks like this man, after all, was standing in with his own kind of politics at Austin. That explains a lot of things that’s been going on. Rangers? Arrest them folks? Huh! I’ll bet they won’t stay in jail two days! You’ll have to say sentence on this man we-all thought was square, thought was our friend, a square Texan and a good man. What shall it be?”
Taisie Lockhart, Portia, spoke not of the quality of mercy. Instead, she bowed her head in her hands and wept without reserve. That act utterly changed the whole complexion of the trial.
Dan McMasters threw up a hand—his left hand. An instant later he was on his feet, but his attitude had no hostility.
“Wait, men!” he commanded. “Don’t move, any of you! I’ll pronounce sentence on myself!
“Of course, I don’t recognize any trial or any court here—I came myself. But some men do fool things. You’d like enough say death or banishment. All right! Let it be banishment! You haven’t proved more than a suspicion. I’ll accept banishment and leave the herd quietly now—not taking anything but what I have now, here.”
His face hardened into gray marble.
“If Miss Lockhart has had one suspicion in her mind that I—that I’d—well, touch anything of hers, or of any other human being’s, then it’s plain enough I don’t belong here. I can’t square that for her. She can never square that with me.
“I’m going now!”
There was no hand or voice raised at this. Turning his back on them for the first time, McMasters swung his belt to place, buckled it, caught his saddle horn and was mounted and away, not looking back. He rode gently, easily, straight. They knew no more of him now than they had before.
“Del! Del, call him back!” broke out Taisie Lockhart. But Del Williams shook his head. “I wish I could, Miss Taisie,” said he simply. “I don’t reckon any of us could now.”
“It had to be,” said Nabours after a time. “I’ll pay him back after we sell our herd. Del Sol can’t have no obligations to him now. But he’s one of the mysteriousest men ever crossed this range. He’s cold, that man. He needs watching.”
“Pay him back? What do you mean, Jim?” Taisie was still in open tears. But she got no reply from her foreman.
“He’s a killer, Jim,” broke in Cal Taney. “We know his ree-cord. He’s done killed five or six men a’ready, young as he is—four since he was sher’f and not countin’ Mexicans. He’s bad, that feller.”
“He never killed no man as sher’f that didn’t resist comin’ along,” ventured Del Williams. “Them two other men—one was coming at him with a ax, on the buffalo range, and t’other had a even break on the street o’ Uvalde. But no man has a chance with him on a even break.”
“He’s cold,” reiterated Nabours, hesitant. But he suddenly was agonized over the discharge of what he had held duty to his owner—the hardest duty he had ever known.
“Good thing fer us he was cold,” said Del Williams. “He’d never have went out alone if things had popped loose. He kep’ his mind and his hand to hisself. Why?”
But he knew why.
Taisie Lockhart, alone in her encampment except for her serving women, threw herself face down on her blankets. A black and ominous world surrounded her. She knew that yonder man, riding away into the twilight, never would come back to her.
“Get your night horses staked, men,” ordered Nabours gruffly, after the return to the encampment.
Against a wagon wheel old Sanchez dreamily thrummed a guitar. Sitting on his bed roll, a little apart in the dusk, Cinquo Centavos, for the time off remuda watch, engaged in song. His face was turned toward a certain star, above a certain remote camp fire, a quarter of a mile away. He thought his voice might carry so far. He was fourteen, and very, very much in love. His voice quavered and roared and broke.
“Neeter, Wah-hah-ha-neeter, ast thy s-o-oul ef we-e-e mus’ pa-a-art!”
“Damn you, kid, shut up!” called the voice of the foreman. “We got troubles enough.”
CHAPTER XIITHE COW HUNTERS
AT midnight the tired herd, after the strange fashion of cattle, rose almost as with one impulse and began slightly to straggle before lying down on the other side. The four men then on the watch, slowly riding two in each direction of the round of the massed cattle, did not redouble their monotonous crooning—time out of mind a range custom in handling cows—but kept their spaces, knowing the herd would soon again resume its rest. No unusual sight or sound alarmed them. As Len Hersey said to Del Williams, they handled sweet so far. The last watch saw the herd rise for the morning, not yet beginning to feed, standing, stretching. The cook began duties of the day, grumbling to himself.
By now, without a word, the wrinkled Anita was gathering bits of fuel, starting a tiny practicable blaze, and groans could be heard from black Milly, still in her cart, complaining of her misery. Frugal, but better than the fare of these others who now moved here and there between the tent and the massed brown blur of the herd, was the breakfast for the owner of Del Sol.
The sun still was young when Nabours, moody, morose, finished his snatched breakfast, got into saddle and resumed his lead. Len Hersey was moved up to the left point now. He and Del Williams dribbled the thin forward edge of the loosely grazing cattle into line. Without crowding, stopping, grazing, advancing, the cattle again began to trail.
No man mentioned the incidents of the night before.
“Roll erlong, little dogies! Roll erlong!” intoned light-hearted Len. “I don’t give a damn where we’re goin’, but we’re a-travelin’!
“Say, Del,” he resumed, “did you see that night kid when he fotch in the remuder this mornin’? He ain’t got no coat, no slicker, and on’y one shirt, and his pants is right wore out now. He was shiverin’ like a monkey in a rain.”
“Did he holler?” asked Del.
“No, not oncet. And he lay his string on a new horse and when he clim him the damn bronc he begin high, wide and lonesome. But the kid sets him. ‘I allus take a pitcher fust off, cool mornin’s,’ says he, ‘along of it’s bein’ so warmin’.’ ”
“Sinker’ll make a cow hand,” rejoined his companion. “He ain’t no bigger fool than the rest of us.”
Back on the line of the great herd the swing men were edging the cattle in. At the rear the two unhappy drags were again in argument with the cook. With the latter, old Sanchez agreed every new calf should be shot and abandoned. Cal Taney opposed this.
“ ’Tain’t fer you, boy, to say what you’ll do er won’t do. None o’ yore difference ef we pile calfs on yore damn kyart tell their airs sweep the groun’. I reckon afore us all gits to Aberlene we’ll have morn’n four thousand newborned calfs—straight hundred per cent. An’ ever’ one o’ ’em is a-goin’ to ride under or on top o’ yore ole kyart. You better engage in prayer, nigger.”
It was again high and hot noon. The herd had fed and walked a half-dozen miles, and now some had lain down in the shade of a live-oak fringe. Nabours, scouting ahead, for an instant paused. Turning, he came back at speed to his point men.
“Throw ’em off!” he called. “Hold ’em on this flat! There’s a big herd ahead coming down from the west. We don’t want to get mixed in.”
“Who is it?” demanded Del Williams. “Somebody ahead of us, going north?”
“Kin savvy. No wagon in sight, and a right loose drive. I’ll go back.”
He met the leader of the new herd, who was riding to meet him; a tall, loose-clad man of aquiline features. He was perhaps thirty-six years of age, and of a certain gay assurance, as his laughing eye declared. His beard, pointing down to his breast, was dark and glossy. Even in his rags he did not lack in jauntiness.
“How,amigo!” Nabours pulled up.
“Caballero!” rejoined the other, grinning and extending a brown and sinewy hand. “My name’s Dalhart, from Uvalde. Which way?”
“North,” said Nabours; and no more.
“You got a trail herd?”
“Si, Señor.Fustest and damnedest ever went out o’ Caldwell.”
“What’s your brand?”
“T. L.—we’re Del Sol people; old Colonel Lockhart.”
“Shore, I know you! Well, you’ll want to cut our herd, for we got plenty o’ yore cows.”
“So?”
“Si, Señor.You see, we’re a cow-huntin’ outfit—on spec. We been out around seven months. Started at the Nueces Cañon and worked north and west clean almost into the Staked Plains. We cleared the Concho and was over almost fur as the Pecos. We sold some cows in yore brand to a outfit going to Sumner, and ’ll account fer them on our tally—less, say a dollar a head for findin’. What they was doin’ clean over in west away from home and off their range you’ll have to say, fer I don’t know. What we got now in the T. L. we picked up mostly on the Double Mountain Fork. You know as well as me they don’t belong in there, and how they got there is something I kain’t figure. But we shore got three-four hundred o’ T. L. fours.”
“I need ’em,” said Nabours.
“There’s others from even as fur north as Palo Pinto. All north and west o’ where they belong at. What pushed ’em west?”
“Friend,” said Jim Nabours, “you’re a cowman. The truth is, Del Sol, and maybe more, has been reg’lar skinned for two years. The push has been up and west, toward the Llano. There’s been a big steal going on. It looks like some big fellers was planning to stock that open range as soon as the Comanches is got out of there.”
“How you figger that? And which way you headed now yoreself?”
“You ever heard of Aberlene?”
“No; what is it?”
“It’s the head of the railroad. A three-dollar steer here is wuth five-ten-fifteen-eighteen dollars up yon—we don’t know how much. The news has just came down. I’m trying to drive up the last leavings of our cows—Miss Taisie Lockhart’s cows, to make a little stake for her. We’ve been skinned by the gang at Austin ever sence the war. What we know we can’t always prove. I’m talking to a cowman. . . . How many men is in yore outfit?” he concluded.
“Only six of us. We got pack horses, travel light. But of all the antigodlin’ bunches o’ cows off their range—I couldn’t tell you how many!
“You see, us fellers don’t skin or drive to the coast canneries. We just turn in any brands we get, and folks usual pays us a dollar a head—er promises to. I reckon we’ve picked up two-three thousand head. Lots get loose in the thickets; we ain’t strong enough to hold ’em.
“And so you’re drivin’ for Miss Taisie Lockhart? I’ve heard of her, clean down home. Orphant, huh?”
Nabours nodded.
“Yes; and the damnedest whitest, squarest, worst-robbed orphant in Texas. I’m shamed to show my herd to a cowman, fer it’s the sorriest I ever seen. Now, I want them fours, all you can spare of ’em. I’ll trade you in cows just come in with calfs; I can’t get them on north. Seems to me like a million cows, now, every one of ’em, he taken this perticler time fer to bring a nice spotted calf inter the world when he ain’t wanted.”
Dalhart, the cow hunter, hooked a leg around his saddle horn, and Nabours went on:
“You take them cows, and calfs, right now, and throw ’en back on Del Sol, just below, and I’ll take what fours and long threes you can spare. When we get back next fall, ef we ever do, I’ll set ’em in yore brand or vent ’em to any one you say, and I’ll credit you fifty cents on each trade inside our own brand, or a dollar if you’d rather have cash then. I’m playing her wide open. Ef we bust on this drive anybody can have Del Sol—corral, house, cows, calfs and all. I just don’t want to be bothered with fresh she-stuff right now, that’s all. As for money—friend, we ain’t got none.”
“Nor nobody.”
“You know you said it! That’s why this Del Sol herd’s important. We allow to bring back money. We’ll settle then, and pay you a dollar a head fer fours, damn glad, fer they was lost off the earth so fur as we all was concerned. Well, you boys done swung over the whole north and west of Texas? That’s the biggest rodeo on spec I ever hearn.”
“Not so much money,” said the other. “We started twelve strong, all good men. One was killed by a horse. Four was killed by Comanches. It was one fight after another on the old Comanche road. We could only bring through the leavin’s, too, like yourself.
“Now, what you say is fair. We’ll throw your she-stuff back fer you—hit ain’t fur and they’ll go back easy. Take what T. L. stuff we got rounded up—and anything else you like. Comes to a orphant, no cowman in Texas is going to ast to look at yore herd.”
“One bunch has,” said Nabours. “Some day I got one or two scores to settle. But till I get back from Aberlene on the railroad, I got neither time ner money. Mr. Dalhart, our outfit’s broke! We’re eating borrowed corn meal and hog meat, and borrowed where I wish to God it wasn’t. Our remuda ain’t all our own. And as fer our brand, I’ll bet you, outside the Fishhook road brand, there ain’t hardly ary two head alike. I been liberal. Please, sir, don’t comb our herd, because it’ll make you dizzy. She’s a orphant.”
Dalhart nodded.
“I know. No man shall ride into yore herd, least of all us. Take what you want out of our stray rodeo. Ef you get back, settle with us fellers any way you like. Down in Uvalde we know of Taisie Lockhart. Ain’t a Texan but says hit’s a damn shame the way her father was a-sassinated. Since the war, there ain’t no law and no jestice in all Texas no more. Hit’s eena’most each fer hisself, and no pay fer nothing. But orphants!”
“And like her!” said Jim Nabours.
“Is she perty as she’s said fer to be?” smiled Dalhart.
“More! Come and see!”
“How?”
“She’s three miles below, in our outfit.”
“You’re not lettin’ her go up the trail!”
“Where else’d she go? She’s broke, and a reg’lar organized gang working out her last head! What elset could she do? Come back. We’ll talk things over.”
When they sighted the scattered Del Sol herd, its riders sitting loose, some of the men asleep in the saddle, the little pair of white carts made first objective for Nabours and his new-found friend.
The latter was not prepared for the vision of the tall young girl who rode out to meet them. Somber of eye, grave, sad, Anastasie Lockhart could no more deny her youth, her beauty, her heredity, her education, than she could negate the strong round figure, the clear skin and the mass of ruddy hair which first impressed this observer, not easily abashed, who now cast down his bridle rein and advanced on foot to meet her, broken hat in hand.
“Miss Lockhart, this is Mr. Dalhart, of Uvalde,” began Nabours. “He’s just above, with a rodeo of mixed stuff. He’s been on a cow hunt. He’s done found cows. I was purposing a few things. We come down to talk it over.”
Taisie Lockhart held out her hand in shy, stiff fashion that little comported with her inches or her masculine garb.
“I’m shore pleased to meet you, Miss Lockhart,” said the newcomer. He stood, a wild but not uncouth figure, a typical border man of that fierce and self-reliant land. “We have heard of Miss Lockhart as fur south as Uvalde,” he added.
When Taisie smiled, a small dimple, very feminine, quite often appeared on her left cheek. This now unsettled Dalhart’s reason utterly.
Nabours now briefly outlined the proposition of trading cows for beeves and making the herd more suitable for the trail. Taisie Lockhart nodded soberly, by no means ignorant of cows and cow methods.
“But now,” broke in Nabours presently, “Miss Taisie, I’ll have to get a new hand somehow, out of Mr. Dalhart’s outfit.”
“Yes? We—we lost one, sir.” Taisie’s voice was unsteady.
The cow hunter was, so it seemed, a simple man of direct habits.
“I rid down, Miss Lockhart,” said he, “to ast fer the job. Would ye take me? I kin ride and rope.”
His eyes, brown, direct, unabashed, looked fair and square into the dark eyes of Taisie Lockhart. She spread out her hands at length, with words of assent which might have had a double meaning:
“One more man? Very well.”
A Paramount Picture.North of 36.TAISIE INVITES THE MYSTERIOUS McMASTERS IN.
A Paramount Picture.North of 36.TAISIE INVITES THE MYSTERIOUS McMASTERS IN.
CHAPTER XIII“BRING AN IRON!”
THE cow hunter lost little time in settling down to work in his new capacity. He had initiative, seemed masterful, independent.
“Let me bring two or three of my boys down and help you-all throw back a lot of these cows and calfs. I’ll leave couple boys to hold our stuff. Come on up again and look it over.”
They rode together until they reached the edge of the wild range herd—literally the loot of a land untenanted—animals wild as buffalo. Nabours gave the herd the quick glance of the practiced cowman.
“Yore stuff’s fatter’n ours,” said he; “yet you’ve driv further.”
“Shore,” replied the other. “We’ve been on a eight-hundred-mile circle, like enough. Way out west, it’s high and dry, and the vine mesquite grass, or the grama north o’ that, curls down like nigger wool. There’s cows here been raised on vine mesquite, fat as Christmas ducks right now.
“I hearn tell that away fur up north, thousand miles er so, they got bunch grass and buffler grass that fats cows the same way; though, o’ course, no cow critter could live through them winters up north.”
“Shore not—nor no man, neither, I reckon.”
“Well, now, here’s the layout,” resumed Dalhart. “Here’s two-three thousand to pick from. As I said, you’ll find plenty T. L.’s. We got maybe three hunderd slicks here and there, fer ourselves. Ef we got a dollar a head straight through we’d be rich on the hunt. Yet beeves at Sumner and north o’ there is fotchin’ fifteen a head and up’ards.”
“Ef we got half that at the railroad my boss’d be rich on one drive,” said Jim Nabours. “Then we’d have money enough to locate the gang that’s been pushing stuff off this range. I don’t think we’ll need to scrape Austin very damn deep.”
“I ain’t sayin’,” replied the cow hunter quietly. “Now what I segest is that you-all cut yore light stuff and let our boys throw it back on yore range. Take out’n our herd as many head o’ good fours and drive ’em all north under the Fishhook, T. L.’s and all the rest. When you sell allow us a dollar a head for findin’ and tradin’. Does that sound fair?”
“More’n such,” said Jim Nabours. “This first herd is a expeariment for all of us. Let’s get the girl on her feet fer sake of her father. And him oncet rich!” he added. “As square a cowman as ever crossed leather. I tell you, that bunch of shorthorns that’s come into Austin done him dirt. Politics, that’s what’s under it—Reconstruction politics. They think they can steal this state because they win the war. Reconstruction? I’ll bet one thing, ef I ever lay eye on the man that’s been riding our range I’ll take him apart so’s’t he’ll be damned hard ever to reconstruck again!”
Now in the glare and heat and dust of the frank Southern spring days, two dozen lank, lithe riders split the two great herds, combed them both, blended them both. Nabours’ face began to lighten as he saw forming a real trail herd of marketable beeves and mature cows. Of the unknown potential market at the rails he really knew nothing. It might demand beef and might ask stocking cattle. The discards of each herd, the yearlings, the cows with calves, the lame and halt, were to be cut back south for the later distribution on their own home ranges.
The whole enterprise in which these two pastoral chiefs now by chance were engaged was one of a day now gone by forever, and it was conducted under standards not understandable to-day. There was no law but range custom. Texas was but thirty years this side the time when twenty enormous land grants, given to Americans, had covered practically all of her vast territory. No scale of cattle values ever had been known. On a strip of twenty-five miles here, not that many miles from the capital of the state, now were assembled almost ten thousand head of cattle. Had a buyer from the North appeared he could have bought the lot at three dollars and a half the head, and at the tally-out he would as a matter of course have been asked to accept the count as it ran, dogies, cows and ancient steers, head for head. In those days a cow was a cow. All horned kine, of any age or sex, were cows.
Again, as to the question of ownership, the gesture of the day was alike close and hard, or large and lenient. No man argued with his neighbor, since a cow was only a cow. A man gave his cloak also to his neighbor if asked—though woe to the man who laid hand on coat, uninvited!
In the herd of these wild-cow gatherers were many unbranded cattle—their own now by virtue of discovery, the custom being “finders, keepers,” as to an unmarked animal. For the mixed lot of the branded strays from widely scattered herds a dollar a head seemed then a fair pay for finding and herding for a hundred miles or more. The adventurers who had taken on this speculation of saddle and rope had rather considered a dollar a head profit than range the find into the second year—after which the increase of the strays would be their own without possible contest. And a dollar a head, payable perhaps next fall, was a thing large and golden to the eye of the bearded, half-clad fighting men who now, with no plan on their own part, had uncovered a large plane of contact of the old with the new, of the late past with a new and crowding present. But for both parties, cow hunters and trail drivers, it was all a speculation. The country north of them was an unknown land. No values yet were established either here or there. The West was yet in embryo.
But all the time, as Nabours and Dalhart, respective leaders, rode at their work, their wonder increased at what each learned from the other. Some malign intelligence, outrunning the apathy of the South in the post-bellum period, had worked on more than a local horizon. There had been a general pushing of the range product into unsettled West Texas, as far as the Comanches would admit. The trail to the Pecos River, up which cattle had been driven to Army posts, the pioneer work of Loving and Goodnight, the casual Western drives of the half-breed Jesse Chisholm to the Pecos crossing, must have been watched and known by certain powerful groups of the new and avid carpetbag politicians then crowding South.
That a covert range ring was working in Austin—as a beef ring later was to work in Washington—as well as a river-improvements ring which was hastening to sell or take over all the state lands at a few cents the acre; and that this sinister gang of far-sighted and unscrupulous men had visions of a day of a vast empire of their own, stocked with cattle which had cost no more than the stealing, branding and driving, could then be no more than suspected by Nabours or Dalhart. But both men were shrewd. Both knew wild ways and wild lands, and both knew cows, though neither had any real vision as to the swift future of cows. They knew that crooked work had been going on, of so large and so vicious an extent as to violate all the ancient and sacred law of custom, as well as the written law. Both men were sober as they rode at their work.
“And to think,” said the old foreman of Del Sol, “they wouldn’t spare even a girl like her!”
Dalhart, lean and bearded adventurer in cows, nodded.
“But there ain’t none like her!”
Nabours paused for a time.
“You been on our string three hours.”
“Three hours is enough,amigo. Three minutes was enough. I’ve never knowed such a woman could ever be in all the world.”
“There’s others think so.”
“I’m sorry for them.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to marry that girl ef hit’s the lastest thing I do.”
“Others has told me such,” replied Jim Nabours, not so much concerned. “It’s right funny about women. Now, I tried for all my early life to marry a girl down in San Felipe. I done right well, and was going to ast her; but another man done married her first. All right, he done it fair, and I didn’t kick. I set down to wait him out, and shore enough, he done die in about ten year and she was a widder. I begin to save up enough to git me new spurs and hat and saddle blankets, and allow to begin courting of Sarah right after branding time—and damn me, ef a Dutch colonist don’t up and marry her afore I git around to it! He last four year, and Sam Doan shot him one day over around Round Rock. I was in debt to Sam fer that, fer now Sarah was a widder oncet more.
“This time I didn’t lose no time. I rid over and told Sarah how it laid. ‘Why, law!’ says she. ‘Why Jim, I never knowed you choose to marry me, er of course I’d of married you rather’n ary one of them others! Why didn’t you say so?’
“ ‘Well, I say so now,’ says I. ‘Even ef I’m crowding forty-eight, I say so.’
“So we done set the day. And right then the war bust in our face and I rid off to the war. I sort of forgot to git married to Sarah, in the excitement. Well, when I come back I was apast fifty, and broke. When I came to look things up I find Sarah has married a Arkansaw widower with eight children over on the Brazos!
“That settled me with women. The game’s too damn rapid fer a man like me.”
“Well, it ain’t going to be too rapid fer me.”
“No? Now look here! Let me ast you something—and let me tell you something. I ast you—likewise I tell you.
“I’m that girl’s maw. I realize how much she owes every man on these both two herds right now, but I allow that the real men in this outfit has got to think of her cows and not her—first, last and all the time, till the said cows is sold.
“You willing to take left point on them grounds and with that understanding? No love making on this trail—not a damned word! Besides, you’ll tell me who you are, after we get done driving and settle down to courting?”
His keen eye sought that of Dalhart, whose own met it as fearlessly.
“It’s a trade!” said he. “I’ll keep my word on that.”
“Well, that’s settled. Now, let’s set off the branding gangs. We got to get at least four hunderd of these fours in the Fishhook before night day after to-morrow. That’ll keep us all from making love, I reckon. Blest be the tie that binds! But you’re a T. L. hand now, and not no more’n that. You got a naturalized citizen’s right to love the boss, but you ain’t reached no years of majority ner discretion this side of Aberlene.”
Jim Nabours rode back in the twilight and flung off from a foam-streaked horse at Taisie’s fire. The tall girl came and seated herself beside him on a bed roll, a hand laid on his knee.
“What’s wrong now?”
His quick eye noted her paleness. He knew she had been weeping. A large gnarled brown hand of his own stroked gently the slender brown hand on his knee.
“Why, Miss Taisie, ain’t nothing wrong, I’d say. Fact is, everything is too damned right, that’s all.”
He went on to tell her of the developments of the day; how more than richly their exchange of discards for beeves was working out; how well the herd was developing. Then he came to what was on his mind.
“Now, see here, Miss Taisie,” he went on, breaking a bit of bark between his fingers, “when we started out we thought we had stripped the Del Sol range. We taken all ages. Only a act of God could of kept us from having a plumb thousand calfs riding in yore carts. But now looky here! We’re going to cut back all that stuff and throw in fours instead. The cut is going back to Del Sol. But who’s going to take care of Del Sol while we go north?”
“Well, who could?”
“You could. Yes, Miss Taisie, you! We can git along damn well without you, and Del Sol can’t get along alone. Don’t you think you’d be safer back home that way than what you will be going north up to the sixth princerpul meridjun with sixteen pirates and God knows what kind of weather?
“You’re only a girl, Miss Taisie—the damnedest finest girl ever borned in Texas; but girls is girls. I can handle cows, Miss Taisie. I can’t handle girls. You go on back home, please ma’am. We’ll pull in afore Thanksgiving with a wagonload of Yankee money.”
The girl straightened up.
“I’ll not go back! I closed the doors when I started up the trail. How could I live there alone?”
“I ain’t ast you to live there alone. What I say is, we’ll be inside of ten miles of Austin when we cross the Colorado. I want you and Del to ride in to Austin and get married. Then I want you both to take charge of this cut and ride on back to Del Sol.”
The old man turned his gray grim eye to her.
“Can’t you leave me be yore maw, Taisie, child?”
“No—no—no, Jim!” Both her hands were on his. “Don’t ask me! I’ve nothing to live for outside of what’s here on the ground. Everything I own I’ve got with me, and all my friends. No, Jim, I’m going through. No use to argue—no use to argue, Jim!”
“I reckon not, ma’am,” said the old foreman, sighing. “All I say is, God ha’ mercy, that’s all! I got a dream there’s going to be hell on this herd.”
So was the genesis of Anastasie Lockhart, cow hand. To-morrow came a creature who rode unconscious of the horse beneath her, scornful of heat and dust as any of these dust-screened figures, scarf over mouth, legs clinging, body rhythmic, hands swift at the test moment; a creature of incredible fascination, with all the velocity and vitality of youth and strength. And before her, seeking respite of her in violent activities, passed vague, flitting, heroic figures, each of whom rode his best for her—and each of whom eke left to the tears of the recording angel crimes in cattle brands they would have lost a hand before committing for their own gain or that of any man.
A vast picture, and a noble, that of the remaking of the Del Sol trail herd. A shrouded yellow sun, hot and again hot. The dulled green of a landscape of timber and grass, of hill and valley, a wild land even then, though under the eaves of the state’s capitol; a land partly settled here, but tenanted under no real acceptance of a social compact. Eager, early, primeval it was—all. Youth of the world!
A tossing sea of wide-pointed horns, overhung with a cloud of dust. Rattling and clacking inside the dust. Rock of Ages; Jesus, Lover; Home, Sweet Home, where lean riders held the mill. And always, cutting through the cloud, one remorseless rider after another edged his chosen victim out for the final rush and the relentless sweep of the thin hide rope. Over and over again, more than five hundred times before that cut was done—twenty times, twenty-five in an hour, counting them all—the little Southern horses sat down and quarter-faced their quarry, each taking his own weight and more in one wrench at his saddle horn and saddle cinches, his gleaming eyes noting the hurled horned creature, his victim also, at the other end of the rope.
Calls of “Bring an iron!” And men sweating at a half dozen fires were ready for that. Till his trembling sides could no longer hold his great heart’s purpose, each savage little horse went back into the dust under a savage man. Two ropes for the heavy steers, two sweating horses; twenty-five brands run in an hour, perhaps—a task for four days done in two.
A vast and splendid picture, and of a great day. Since then two million men and women have mated thereabouts. Yet now, center of that picture—and its cause—there passed, hour after hour, gray, dusty, flitting, tireless, the unmistakable and unconcealable figure of a young woman. . . . Yes, a creature of incredible vitality and velocity, of life and youth.
Youth of the world!