CHAPTER XIVA STRANGE ERRAND
DAN McMASTERS, sheriff of Gonzales and captain of state Rangers, rode into the straggling village of Austin, capital of a state so large a horseman could not cross it in a month. He bore no outward evidence of having passed through any agitating scenes. His apparel evinced no sign of disorder, his face was coldly emotionless as ever. He might have been almost any tall and well-clothed young man. One thing only set him apart from the usual visitor: By virtue of his calling he wore his two heavy six-shooters. The handle of the left-hand gun pointed forward; that of the right-hand weapon to the rear—a puzzling combination to any student of possibilities. Granted that he was a left-handed man, which hand would first seek a weapon? Or if right-handed, which? That was a problem which, lacking time, some half dozen men had never solved to their own success.
A certain red-faced, gray-haired and rather rotund individual active in the office of the treasurer of the commonwealth of Texas, sitting before a low-topped desk in a room of the building which served as state capitol, looked up as the newcomer entered.
“Good evening, sir,” said McMasters pleasantly. “Do I find Mr. Rudabaugh in?”
The official made no immediate response.
“You do not,” said he finally.
“No? I infer that he is out of town?”
“Yes,” rejoined the other.
McMasters smiled innocently.
“In such case he is no longer in jail?”
At this the official displayed feeling.
“What business is it of yours?” he demanded. “And how do you know he is in jail? He didn’t stay there longer than it took to call court. There are not people enough in Texas to keep Mr. Rudabaugh in jail.”
“I heard that a deputy United States marshal took him and his party the other day, below the Colorado, and sent him in with a force of Rangers. As you say, it might have been supposed that no court in this town would hold him.”
The red-faced official abated somewhat of his pompousness.
“From what I’ve heard in description, I believe you are Mr. McMasters, sheriff of Gonzales,” said he presently.
“I am that same, sir,” replied McMasters smilingly. “If I needed to quote Davy Crockett, I might say that I have the closest shooting rifle and the best coon dog in the whole state of Texas. Yes, I’m McMasters of Gonzales.”
“Well,” began the other, embarrassed, “it’s only right to tell you that at the preliminary hearing all those men were discharged.”
“That is why I called. I wanted to talk things over with Mr. Rudabaugh. I thought I might be able to explain one or two things to him. I thought maybe I might be of some use to him.”
Silence of the other, now afraid to speak.
“Where can I find Mr. Rudabaugh?” The quiet voice took a new note.
“That I can’t answer. He left town again yesterday morning, with some other gentlemen. They headed west.”
“It looks as though Mr. Rudabaugh thinks I still am after him. Perhaps he has been mistaken about my motives and purposes with him. Perhaps he forgets that my father voted and worked against slavery, the same as the gentlemen of your party did. Why antagonize Gonzales? Why fight the Rangers?
“Now, what I want to tell Mr. Rudabaugh is this: I know where that trunk of Texas land scrip is to-day. I am ready to tell him where it is.”
The official coughed, embarrassed.
“That was what he wanted to get hold of at Del Sol. Well, I got hold of it myself. I know where it is to-day. I can take him to it at any time he likes. Does that sound interesting?”
The red-faced man sat up.
“It sounds strange, coming from you!”
“Well, there are times when it’s hard to get the truth. I never found much use in showing all my own hand in public. A peace officer has to be careful. Perhaps the state treasurer has misunderstood me. Perhaps I am willing to work with him for a little time, and not against him. How then?”
“Mr. Rudabaugh and his associates, too, have been very much misunderstood by the people of Texas,” began the state official. “He is a man of large ideas, a man of vision. Our friends of the other party prefer to see Texas remain as she always has been—remote, impoverished, with no commercial outlook, no hope on earth. Mr. Rudabaugh sees a wider future for Texas. We all do here.” He spoke virtuously.
“Precisely! Well, I’m one of the growing number of Texans who’d agree with him on that last. We don’t deny that there are chances in land and cows such as we never dreamed. The men who work fast in Texas now will be rich—as rich as they like. But we can’t always climb up on the housetop and tell all the world about the means and methods. Of course, that means that some may misunderstand such men as Mr. Rudabaugh. You know that?”
“Why, yes, of course; I know the way Mr. Rudabaugh himself works—always decisive, never telling much of his plans. His friends deplore the criticism he has received in certain quarters.”
“Yes, he has occasion to be cautious. Still, if Mr. Rudabaugh, not as state treasurer but as president of a certain land-and-cattle company, has any wish to confer with the man who saw him arrested the other day, when he was inquiring about a certain block of additional land scrip, that man is willing to talk with him now. We might find something of mutual interest. You-all here in Austin might do worse than make friends down Gonzales way.”
McMasters smilingly waved a hand at either gun.
“I’m not quite alone. We will both have to come under a white flag. If he wants to bemuy amigo, maybe I can be of service to him.”
His gray eyes, now narrowed, were fixed without wavering upon those of this other man.
“Tell me, where is Sim Rudabaugh!” he demanded suddenly. The man behind the desk started as though under an immediate menace.
“Well, since you seem to offer your aid, Mr. McMasters, in a misunderstanding—a very deplorable misunderstanding—I presume I may tell you. He’s gone north, up the trail, toward the Brazos. He’s on some private business of his own.”
“Yes? He’s in camp, waiting for the big Del Sol herd? Where is his camp?”
The desk man grew very uneasy; but at length he replied hesitantly: “Well, I’d take the trail that runs due north from San Marcos if I had to find him. I would say he might be camped a ride of a day and a half north of here—say, thirty to fifty miles north, on the general road to Fort Worth village.
“You don’t know where that herd is, do you?” he added. “Mr. Rudabaugh regards its going north as a very grave mistake; indeed, a risky and ruinous thing for the state at just this time. You don’t know where the herd is now?”
“Yes, I do know. I’ve just come from it. It’s been held up a few days in west of here. They may get over the Colorado by to-day. I ought to be able to find Mr. Rudabaugh well in advance of the herd itself, then, you think?”
“But you didn’t tell me where the scrip is.” The other man flushed at seeing his eagerness noted.
“Well,” said McMasters slowly, “you yourself and I myself are not supposed to know a damned thing about that chest of papers, are we? But we do, eh? Well, when we find the T. L. cows we will come pretty near finding that scrip. And scrip is going up, eh?
“Oh, I’ll tell you this much, my friend. I know all about the moves of Mr. Rudabaugh’s big company to get holdings west toward the edge of the Staked Plains—on the Double Mountain Fork and above there. You see? Well, I don’t see why you and I should beat about the bush. I know all about the operations that have driven almost all the central range’s holdings on out farther west.
“There are a lot of things I know. Well, do you think I am safe to trust? And don’t you think the administration might do worse than be friendly to Gonzales and Uvalde?”
The other man drew himself up with a long sigh of doubt, apprehension, but made an attempt at merriment.
“Well,” said he, “of course, this is the first time we’ve met. I don’t know that I’d trust you to take care of me, but I believe I’d trust you to take care of yourself.”
“I always have,” said McMasters simply. “That’s why I’m here now. Suppose you and I have a little war council, eh?”
When McMasters walked his horse down the long street of Austin town, rifle under leg, he looked neither to the right nor to the left, though well aware of the scrutiny which followed him from more than one door and window. The reputation of the mysterious, always restless sheriff of Gonzales, captain of the newly revived state constabulary, was one that reached beyond the confines of his own county. No one had looked for him in Austin—to the contrary. But then, as one man said to a neighbor, McMasters, of Gonzales, could always be counted on to be doing some unaccountable thing.
CHAPTER XVNORTHWARD HO!
THE reconstructed and augmented Del Sol herd passed on northward steadily, as though impelled by some cosmic force. It had required well-nigh a week to cut the two herds and blend them into one, for handling heavy beeves in the open is vastly different from the work of the corral and branding chute on light cattle. At the end of the work the remuda was dragged and drooping, the men yet more taciturn. But they could look out with pride over well-nigh four thousand head of longhorns such as would make any cowman’s eye brighten even in that day.
Now, daily more accustomed to the trail, the cattle shook down to the daily march. At dawn they did not feed at first; but, never urged to speed, in an hour or two would graze along, halting in the march, advancing, the concourse at times stretched out over more than a mile, perhaps a quarter that distance in width. At midday, thrown off the trail—if trail it could be called which as yet had never known a herd—they grazed well, and in that portion of the country could find water two or three times a day; so that they took on or held flesh rather than lost it.
“Did ary one of you-all ever hear how far it is to Aberlene?” asked Nabours of his new man, Dalhart, whom he had put on point in view of his obvious education as a cowman.
“Must be e’en around about a plumb thousand miles,” replied the latter. “Hope hit’s thisaway all the ways—plenty of grass and the rivers full enough fer water right along. We ain’t had to hunt water yet. You’d orto see the Llano! We’ve driv two days, out yan, with their tongues hangin’ out.
“Water! When we hit the Colorado I thought we got plenty water. She’ll swim a horse in a dry year, and she swum us for more’n a hundred fifty yards! I was mighty glad to ferry them carts.
“Uh-huh. Ner that ain’t all—the Brazos’ll do the same, and only luck’ll save us from swimmin’ a quarter mile, maybe, on the Red. Then beyond that’s the Washita, narrer but deep. I never talked with no man that ever was north of the Chickasaws. We’ll wet our saddles plenty, shore. What cows we don’t drownd and the Injuns don’t steal, or that don’t get lost in night runs—why, that’s what we’ll have to sell. Four thousand’s a big herd to han’le—too big—but I’ve gethered cows long enough to know a feller better git plenty when the chancet comes.”
North of the first unbridged river—the Colorado—the advance was over a country practically new, although now subdivided into organized counties. The main thrust of the early population was from the south and lower east, so that now the farther north they got the sparser grew the infrequent settlements. All North and Northwest Texas remainedterra incognitaeven for Texans, and no map of it ever had been made, let alone of the wild Indian Territory that lay north of it. The thousands of longhorns, the first herd ever to go north from a point so far south in Texas, plodded along, never turning a backward foot, but hourly finding a new land. Austin was a county-seat town rather than a capitol city. Such communities as Temple, Waco, Cleburne, Fort Worth—all close to the ninety-eighth meridian, along which lay the general course of the first of the cattle drives before the trails moved west—were cities in embryo; Fort Worth, through which bodily the trail ran, had then not over one hundred inhabitants; enough for a metropolis in a state that had not a hundred miles of rails and no trace of a lasting market for the one great commodity—cows.
Across a half dozen counties, a dozen lesser streams, the singular procession passed onward, epochal, in an abysmal ignorance and a childlike self-confidence. Its course was due north; and since now the grass was good and water courses full, it needed to make no digressions. The herd left a trail a hundred yards wide, two hundred, half a mile; but the main road remained written plainly for any who might follow.
Nabours was cowman enough not to crowd his cattle on a march of such indefinite duration, but continually he fretted over the necessary slowness of the journey.
“It’s good country,” he admitted to Del Williams; “can’t complain; grass all right; high enough, but not washed out; and a good creek every forty rod almost. But I never did know Texas was so big. Here we are into May, and when we make the Brazos we’ll be only maybe a hunderd and fifty mile north of where we started at. It’ll be anyways a hunderd years afore we make Aberlene, ef there is any such place, which I doubt, me. Not one of us knows nothing, and nary one has ever been even up here afore. We’ll just about hit the Red when she’s up full.”
“We ain’t there yit,” rejoined his new point man cheerfully. “We may all git drownded in the Brazos; an’ ef we do we won’t need worry none about the Red.”
They had not yet lost all touch with the settlements; indeed, continually crossed the great pastures of men who under range custom held their own river fronts and range. Now and again a sort of trace led them north—the compass finger of fate always pointed north and not west for the state of the Lone Star. But of actual road there was none, fences were undreamed and bridges never yet had been held needful for traveling man. When, therefore, they struck the great Brazos, coming down as did all these upper rivers from the east rim of the mysterious Llano Estacado, it was relief to Nabours to find a pair of rough boats which he fancied he could lash together into ferriage for his troublesome carts and their timid passengers. For the herd a swimming crossing once more was necessary, and demand was made once more on the native generalship of the foreman.
“Put ’em in warm, men,” he said to his men at the camp fire in a great arm of the river. “Ef a cow’s warm and the sun’s shining he’ll take the water easy. Ef he’s chilly he begins to think of home and mother. We’ll rest ’em here till late to-morrer morning. The bank’s highest on the south side and we can throw ’em in easy. I don’t think there’s more’n a hunderd yards or so of swimming, no ways.”
His judgment proved good for an amateur—as all trail drovers then were. Well warmed, the herd strung into the ford amiably enough, led by the point men and pushed by the swings. The horse herd already had been crossed, for horses swim better than cattle, and have more courage at a wide crossing; and this laid down the line for the herd leaders, who went in readily enough.
The long line of the cattle, as it reached the swimming channel, was swept down stream in a deep U, but when they caught footing and made up the farther bank the line was established and the crossing went on steadily, the line never broken and not a head lost out of the great total. It went forward as though in an accustomed routine; and this first successful essay in crossing big water gave confidence to all.
All the saddle horses, including Blancocito, had to swim, and so did the yoke oxen of the carts. The owner of the herd patiently waited her turn. Old Anita crossed herself for two solid hours, sure her end had come. Milly found her relief in loud and tearful lamentations.
“What ever brung us-all ’way up yere?” she exclaimed. “My folks wuz Baptists, and so’m me; but what I says is, I done been baptized oncet and dat’s plenty. I’m a notion to walk back home.”
“No you won’t,” said the trail boss, who with his best man had come back to see to this last work. “You and Anita set right on yore cart seats. Miss Taisie’ll take care of you. Ef you drownd we can get plenty better cooks, so don’t you worry. Ef you did float off, you couldn’t sink noways. Anita’s the one in danger—she’s all bones. You set in the middle and say yore prayers like Anita does.
“Don’t you worry none, ma’am,” he added, addressing Taisie. “I’m going to take them two John boats somebody has left here and make a raft that’s safer than a bridge.”
His process gave proof of the Texan’s strange distrust in all boats and confidence in all horses, although it showed no less the resourcefulness of the real explorer, crossing country with such means as lay at hand.
It was no great matter to rope the two broad-horn scows together side and side, and to lay a pole platform across to receive the carts, which were run on by hand. Remained the question of propulsion, and none of these knew aught of sail or pole or oars. This meant falling back on thevade mecum—the horse, without which in his day the railroads and bridges might as well never have been.
Nabours lashed his cart wheels fast to his craft, so that he could risk strain on them. Then he got a long pole, some thirty feet in length. All the time singing and whistling to himself, and vouchsafing no answer to any, he passed this across the body of the foremost cart and lashed it fast. The ends projected widely at each side.
“I got a steamboat now,” said he to his followers, “but I ain’t got no side paddle wheels. Ride in there, you points—Dalhart, and you, Del—you’re side wheels. When you get under the ends, each of you reach up and tie yore saddle horn to the end of the pole. Then swim back yoreselfs. The horses couldn’t sink ef they wanted to, and I don’t reckon there’s only one way they can swim, and that’s acrost.”
Theirs not to reason why, the two men obeyed, managing to get into the boat, which still lay aground, the side-wheel horses standing not over belly deep, each encouraged by its rider, who lay along the gunwale anxiously. But when at length the thing was put to the test by bodily pushing the clumsy contrivance into the current, the unique experiment proved a success. The horses, finding themselves carried off their feet, began to swim vigorously, their instinct or their intelligence leading them to head angling upstream. The result was that the craft, even thus heavily loaded, made astonishing headway; indeed, finding a landing just below the ford end established by the herd. With shouts and laughter the remaining men once more swam their horses over in the wake. The crossing, so novel that even Taisie forgot her fears, was made with expedition and in perfect safety.
“It’s easy,” said Jim Nabours, modestly answering the compliments of his men. “Of course, ef ’twasn’t for the womenfolks we wouldn’t have to bother. A feller couldn’t keep house without a horse, could he? Ain’t nothing a horse and a rope can’t do. My horse swum me over twicet, and didn’t hardly wet the saddle to the tops of the rosaderos. There ain’t nothing safe as a horse, ma’am.
“Now you men go on and string ’em out”—he turned to his well-wetted associates. “They’re all over and all ready to move. It’s a dandy crossing. We’ll bed three or four miles on, if it looks good. Feed ’em slow and get ’em full. A full belly’s the best way to handle a cow. I’ll push on ahead right soon.”
Just now he rode over to the moody figure that sat her reclaimed horse at the upper side of the fording trail. His face was frowning.
“Miss Taisie,” said he, “one thing I’ve got to tell you. There ain’t going to be two trail bosses on this herd. It’s you or me. Now I want to say that we can’t be over about thirty of forty mile from Fort Worth. I reckon you and Del can get married there, huh? Then you still could ride back home to Del Sol. I don’t know what there is ahead. We ain’t more’n started. I can take chances for myself, and men and my cows—but not for you!”
“Jim! Why, Jim!” She laid a hand on his soaked sleeve. “You don’t think I’m a quitter, do you?”
“Lord knows I don’t, ma’am! I wisht you was.”
“Jim! The lone herd of Del Sol, the first out of Texas? Something big, Jim! I don’t think I’ll be scared any more. It wouldn’t be playing square with you-all to get married and go back home. . . . Home?”
He turned quickly. Tears again were on the girl’s cheeks. With a savage groan he caught the cheek strap of Blancocito and led her to the vehicles.
“You Milly, damn yore black Baptist hide, quit yore shouting and build a fire! Make some coffee for Miss Taisie. I’ll tell Sinker to hold the remuda back, Miss Taisie. You-all come on up then.”
Presently Cinquo Centavos rode up, shy and grinning, abashed yet happy at being appointed personal guardian of his deity. Thin, burned brown, ragged, his hat almost no hat at all, boots and saddle alone marked him worthy to join these other men—these and his instinctive mastery of horseflesh. At sight of Milly clambering down over the cart wheel—indeed a dismaying spectacle—his mount began to plunge and pitch. The boy sat him, annoyed. Taisie waved a hand.
“Fine, Cinquo!” she called. “I like to see you ride.”
The boy smiled as he jerked up the head of the horse.
“I didn’t make him pitch, ma’am,” said he. “He’s jest done that hisself. I reckon it was the sight o’ Milly’s laigs. He’s all right now.” He dismounted.
“How are you coming on, Cinquo?” inquired his mistress. “Getting to be a regular trail man?”
“I ain’t lost a head yit, ma’am,” said the youth simply. “One D Slash hawse turned back this mornin’, but I crossed him. I got my hull bunch. Now we’re over two-three rivers; they won’t turn back now. Hawses is a heap reasonabler than cows.”
“Jim says you work too hard. You don’t need to be up all night on a remuda, he says—horses stick together. You don’t have to watch them every minute.”
“Shore they do, ma’am. You don’t bed ’em and tuck ’em in like you do cows. I wouldn’t be no cowman,” superiorly. “Gimme two-three weeks on the trail,” he added eagerly, “I wouldn’t hatter watch so hard, like now. They feed against the wind, ma’am. I got the bell on that big white Del Sol mare. I allus listen which way the bell is soundin’, and so I allus know where they’re at: Why, sleep? I slep’ most a hour last night. When I don’t hear the bell I wake up. It’s easy if you savvy hawses. I ain’t gwine to lose nary head, to Aberlene, ma’am.” He colored deeply. “I—well, I ain’t, now!”
“I’ve got all good men, Cinquo,” said his deity. “They savvy cows and savvy horses.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The boy’s throat gulped.
“Have some coffee, Cinquo,” said Taisie. “Milly, give Cinquo something to eat. He hasn’t lost a head.”
Seated comfortably on the ground, Cinquo grew more confident.
“Ma’am, ain’t the nights han’some?” he ventured. “So bright, quiet-like. Times, I lay on the groun’ by my hawse; come midnight, I kin hear the bell, and hear my hawses blow, nighest ones; er sometimes hear the cows grunt and blow, too, bellies full and right contented. So all the world’s kind o’ happy-like. And the stars is so fine, ma’am! Don’t you think so? Like glass, they air. Seems like God must ’a’ busted a winderpane and slammed the pieces right up agin the sky, and they stuck there, shinin’ like they was wet.”
“Yes, Cinquo. So you’ve noticed the stars too?”
“Then we both do!” he exulted. His young, shy eyes shone. Indeed, he was her knight, ready to risk all in her honor. So were his nights borne, sleepless in ardor and reverence.
“Stahs!” broke in Milly. “Stahs! They’s common! I know whaffur I go Nawth—I gwine to git me a apple! Onliest apple I ever done et,” she explained, “were what Sher’f McMasters gimme. He taken it out’n his saddle pocket and said would I eat it? ‘Mister Sher’f,’ says I, ‘what setch a thing like disher cost now?’ says I. ‘Oh, it mout ’a’ costed fifty cents,’ says he, ‘’cludin’ of freight.’ ‘Huh,’ says I, ‘ef it cost fifty cent, I reckon Ah gwine to stahve on, stahve on!’ But some time, ef ever I git Nawth, and ever I git whah apples is at, an’ ain’t nobody a-lookin’—u-m-m—huh! Now, Mr. Dan McMasters, he sayed——”
“Go get my horse, Cinquo!” broke in Taisie Lockhart imperatively. “Milly, pack the dishes. Come, we must get on!”
A Paramount Picture. North of 36.“WHAT ARE YOU—FRIEND OR FOE?” DEMANDS JIM NABOURS.
A Paramount Picture. North of 36.“WHAT ARE YOU—FRIEND OR FOE?” DEMANDS JIM NABOURS.
CHAPTER XVIIN THE NIGHT
THAT night the stars, indeed, almost tallied with Cinquo’s description in their pointed brilliances. The wind was nothing now, the silence, save for a few quavering coyotes, was deep and full of peace. Contentment sat on the wild bivouac. On a gentle slope well-nigh four thousand cattle were lying close packed in a vast oval, less than a fifth of a mile in extent, half that distance across on the lesser axis. Bedded on high, dry grass, in the path of the breeze, themselves full of grass and water, they lay, heads high, level with their cover, blowing and chewing, eyes closed and happy.
The fire points of the cook’s evening meal now barely showed. Afar came the faint sound of men’s voices, singing—the night watch riding slowly, two men in one direction, two in the opposite, fifty feet or so back from the bedded animals. These latter in some vague way knew they were protected. They lay and grunted dully, having ended one more day of their march toward fate.
“Ain’t that enough to make a cowman happy?” said Nabours to Del Williams, nodding toward the herd as they lolled by the fading fire. “You couldn’t kick ’em up.”
“We ain’t started yet, Jim,” said the young Texan.
“How come we ain’t? It couldn’t be much over four hunderd mile to Red River Station from Del Sol. Them cows is plumb gentle already.
“I’m going to roll in, Del. You and Dalhart better go on at midnight, I reckon. Watch the Dipper.”
Afar, at the established distance from the watchers, the tiny fire at Taisie’s tent fell flickering into absorption by the night. Taisie lay, wide-eyed, looking out through the tent front at the myriad-pointed sky. She told herself that it was the coffee taken late, but she knew that was not why she did not sleep. Or, if she slept, she wakened always with the picture before her of a ring of men, one facing her, his eyes calm, although he was being tried on the point of honor dearest to any man. It was worse than trying him for his life, she knew that. Had she, Portia,provocateur général, judge, jury, been just?
Restless, confined by the oppression of the tent, Taisie drew her blankets beyond the flaps and tried the open air. Came the stertorous sounds of Milly’s sleep, the cough of the few animals picketed near by. She raised on elbow and looked to the tiny row of brush, piled as windbreak by old Sanchez. He and his wife Anita always slept so, with one scant serape above them. But they slept. She could not sleep.
She raised higher on her elbow, looked up at a sudden sound. Blancocito was standing, ears pointed toward the fringe of mesquite that flanked their little eminence. He had flung up his head, snorting. She turned, would have risen, for she was a fearless soul and reared on the border. Could it be Indians?
At that instant she felt a powerful hand close over her mouth. An arm forced her to the ground. She looked up into the face of a man! He was a tall man, a strong man. Suddenly she ceased struggling. She knew what man this was!
But why, as he crouched beside her, holding her down, stifling her voice, did he, too, look with eyes fixed where those of the plunging horse just had been, toward the edge of the thicket?
“Hush!” She heard his voice, though he kept his head up. “Don’t call out! Where is the little trunk? Have you got it?”
She nodded, under his stifling hand, or would have done so.
“You thief!” she tried to say. “Oh, God curse you!” For now she felt her sentence had been just. “Oh, you thief!” she said, or thought she said.
But though again she writhed and tried to call, no sound came save the hard whistling of her nostrils, coveting air.
Then she almost tore free—did tear free. Crouching almost over her, his body above hers, one hand holding her down, suddenly she saw him go to one knee, saw a move of his free arm. Her eardrums were almost shattered by a double explosion just above her head. He had fired at something in the dark.
Came medley of night alarm—horses snorting, men calling. Taisie’s senses could give no sequence to all the varied sounds. She caught the rush of hoofs toward the mesquite, thought that her horse had been stolen; heard a man’s scream in the night, where she supposed the thief had shot one of her own men.
But concurrently she heard another sound, one which terrified every man who also heard it—the rumble and thunder of four thousand cattle, wakened by vague terror.
The sounds of shots in the night were not usual, not understood by them, hence ominous of ill. Jumping to their feet, addled by the slumber in their eyes, their tails high and rolling, their horns rattling, the herd by instinct turned in the direction opposite the sounds of terror. Then, swayed by the one blind instinct left to them, they broke.
Two of the night watch, caught by the storm of horns, were pushed away, barely keeping ahead in the night. The dreaded run was on. In the night was no peace at all. No, nor peace in this girl’s soul.
With the first burst of the herd every man in the camp was on his feet and hurrying for his night horse. Each knew what to do. There was no oriflamme, but the ominous roll and clack ahead made command, guidance. The one thing was to ride.
The first salvation for any man meant leaving everything to the horse. To check or attempt to guide him meant death. Of better night sight than his rider, and no more eager than he to be trampled into a bloody pulp, the horse would put out unasked his limit of speed and care of footing. Trust him, also, to edge ahead or outside of any enveloping part of the herd.
But after a mile of this madness in the dark, the master intelligence began to assert its purpose, to control brute terror. Those at the flank, at the rear, began to see points and streaks of flame. The two men ahead, at last free on the edge of the run, were crowding their horses against the front ranks of the cattle, jostling into them the best they could in a perilous give and take, firing their six-shooters across the faces of the leaders, trying to force them into a mill; such being the proper psychology in cows.
The pistol lightning dwindled to firefly points, ceased. The reports had not been audible over the roar of the run. No one could reload the cap-and-ball revolver, and six shots left the pursuer reduced to quirt and spur. To the few who remained at the encampment, there passed a lessening storm of sound. So at length came silence and suspense.
Thinking that the first two shots had been fired by some of his own men, or possibly by a frightened woman, Nabours left no guard at the camp. The side encampment alone had tenancy.
The two women of Taisie sprang from their sleeping places and ran to the little tent, not to protect their mistress but to seek protection—Sanchez was gone with the others. They saw her, in the dim light, standing close to a tall man. This was certainly not a true man of Del Sol, for he was not riding now. They ran back, undecided; could not see or hear what went on in the gloom.
A voice spoke low to Taisie’s ear—a voice she knew.
“The little trunk—is it in your tent?” The hateful question, itself an accusation for the asker, was repeated.
“No!” she got strength to say, clutched by her fears, her anger, her sudden hatred.
“Where is it, then? Quick!”
“I’ll not tell you!”
“All right! But watch out for it! They’re after it!”
They were after it! Who were “they”? And who was this? Under which flag, all along, has been Dan McMasters, sheriff, captain?
She did not hear his voice again. Suddenly, as though he sensed her indecision, she felt herself swept to his body as she stood, her own strong body helpless under strength of his. No hand was on her mouth, but she could not cry out. She felt his cheek laid against her cheek—for one half instant; heard a sigh, a gasp, felt at her temple then a kiss as light and gentle as the embrace had been ruthless and savage. Then she was free.
She stood alone. He was gone. Yes, he went that way, in the direction the flame of the two shots had lined out. He went lightly, swiftly.
And in the morning, when first they sought why the great buzzards were hopping, they found a man, a dead man, with his hands crossed on his breast and his hat drawn down over his face. It was not Dan McMasters. None of them knew who it was. But Taisie Lockhart knew that Dan McMasters had killed this man. Why?
It was Sanchez, first back from the run, who first saw this dead man in the daylight, and he knew him.
“Nombre de Dios!”
Sanchez crossed himself. He knew the man’s feet, his boots, his spurs. Not so long ago he had tied those feet under a horse’s belly.
Sanchez coursed like a questing hound for the sign. Many tracks of horses. A loose horse without the Fishhook brand. All of which made mystery enough.
“Miss Taisie,” demanded Milly, “You’se all a-trimble, chile! Who dat man? Who him were standin’ thah?”
She caught the hand Taisie had against her bosom, the hand that covered her temple.
“No! I don’t know!” she heard her mistress say.
But Jim Nabours was harder to satisfy when he came in soon after sunup, his face lined as though he had lost pounds in the night ride. He cursed openly as he snatched loose his cinches and turned off his trembling and sweat-stained night horse. Then he turned to Taisie, who had come over to the men’s camp.
“Who done it?” he demanded. “You a-shooting at some shadow? Look what you done! We get this run, just when they was gentling. I thought you was a cow hand!”
The girl was on the point of saying that, yes, she had shot; that she was sorry. She put a hand to her temple. . . . He had kissed her there.
“Jim, I did not shoot.”
“Who did, then? That fool nigger woman? You—Milly?”
“Me? I never didn’t. My gun only shoots oncet. Two shoots come, right at Miss Taisie’s tent. So help me on my Bible, Mr. Jim, I never did shoot not none. No, sah!”
“Who was it, Taisie?” He used her as a child now, but his voice was sad. “The shots was right at this place. Who was it—one of our men?”
“No, Jim, no!”
“Who was he? Tell me now! You’re hiding him? You know who he was?”
A very long silence. The man’s face was fronting her, streaked with the dust. He was a loyal man.
At last, “Yes!”
And now she faced him. Nabours guessed.
“McMasters! You know why he came? Ah, Taisie, girl!”
“I don’t know! I think it was the trunk. He said something about it—I don’t know.”
“It’s the scrip, Taisie! He’s following that still? What did he say? Ask where it was?”
“Yes. But he said to look out for it, to watch it. I don’t understand——”
“I understand that that renegade McMasters is a thief and a scoundrel. We never orto of let him go!”
She could not make reply. The world was getting too much for her, overcoming.
“Sanchez!” she said pointing.
An exclamation broke from Nabours when he saw Sanchez fling an arm, heard his faint call. He got on a horse, galloped over to where Sanchez stood, dismounted. Then he also saw the dead man.
“I know-a-dis-ahombre, Señor Jeem!” Sanchez was excited. “We send-a heem to jail. I tie-a da foot. How come-a heem here while he’s in jail?Nombre de Dios!”
“But who killed him, Sanchez?”
Nabours saw the two wounds, an inch apart.
“Quien sabe, Señor?” replied Sanchez gravely. “I just find-a heem now.”
But the tired brain of Jim Nabours, up all night and strained to his limit over the scattered herd, only grew more muddled.
“Let him lay!” he ordered savagely. “That’s one more, anyhow, no odds who got him. Buzzards is too good for him!”
“Miss Taisie,” he began again as he found her at the cook fire, “that’s one of the Rudabaugh gang, all right. If it was Dan McMasters killed him he done it by mistake; he thought it was one of our men. Afore he went, he folds this corp’s hands and covers up his face with his hat. What more could he do?”
The girl sat silent, her face cold as some cameo in ice.
“Taisie Lockhart”—the old foreman’s voice was hard now—“one thing at least—you don’t need no more proof now! That’s over, anyhow!”
CHAPTER XVIIMR. DALHART DECLARES
“ON OUR way, Sanchez!” commanded Nabours, breaking the tense silence of the disheartened camp. “We’ve got to get back. The boys are holding three or four bunches over thataway.”
“Seguro, Señor Jeem,” replied the old man. He nodded. Yet another rider was coming in.
“That’s Dalhart. He ought to know something. We’ve got to have fresh horses.”
“Poco tiempo!”
The keen ear of the old Mexican again served. Afar they heard a tinkling. From behind a screening mesquite fringe showed the head of the remuda, following a gray bell mare at a stiff trot. Back of the horses rode Cinquo, his clothing stripped, his face bloody and pale. He got no word of praise, nor asked one. The black bruises on his legs showed through his ripped jeans.
“Well?” The trail boss turned to Dalhart, grimed and dust-covered, who had brought a tin cup to the fire.
“We’ve got around a thousand head, maybe twelve hunderd. Del and two boys are holding ’em on a flat this side the pecan bottoms—three mile, I reckon. Ain’t it hell? They scattered like pa’tridges. I ain’t seen no one else.”
“Yo, me an’ dos hombres!” began Sanchez, excited, pointing.
“Damn it, talk English, Sanchez!” interrupted Nabours savagely.
“Seguro; muy bien, Señor Corporal,” rejoined Sanchez. “I say, two man and me, we got plentyvacasround up. They send-a me for tobac’. We got h’eight, seven hoonderd head,piense qu’ si. Most half-a da herd.”
“Not half yet. Well, Dalhart, I’ve got to ride the fan. Stay here and watch things. We’ll make the gethering to this bed ground.”
“But who done that shooting anyway?” demanded Dalhart suddenly. “That’s what started ’em.”
Nabours looked over his shoulder to where Taisie sat.
“Dalhart,” said he, “there’s funny business. The Rudabaugh gang is follering us, nigh as I can tell. They allowed to stampede the herd and then jump what was left of the camp.”
“But who shot?”
“I’d take my oath it was Dan McMasters, the man we sent out of our camp. Well, he killed one of his own men.”
“The hell!”
“Yes, he did. Look yon!” The great birds now made a black blot on the grass. “That’s one of the Rudabaugh men. McMasters killed him by mistake. He was right in Miss Taisie’s camp.”
“Jim,” said the cow hunter at last, “that Austin gang don’t never mean fer no Del Sol herd never to leave this country. Why?”
“For the same reason they want that Burleson Lockhart scrip. For the same reason they killed Burleson Lockhart. Dalhart, them carpetbaggers have got a big game on. All the state of Texas to steal—and they’re going to steal it!
“And McMasters got away again! I thought he was our friend. We’re riding his horses and drinking his coffee now. She don’t know that. Dalhart, ef ever a girl needed a man to take care of her, yon’s one that does. One man’s better’n twenty, with a woman. She needs just one—and she ain’t got one.
“Well, I got to go back. Come Sanchez,” he concluded. “You’ll have to stay here and look out for the camp, Dalhart. They might come back. Shoot first!”
Left in charge, Mr. Dalhart employed his own methods. First he inquired of the cook for hot water, got a tin pan of water on the base of the wagon tongue and found a bit of yellow soap. Cleansing his dusty face and hands the best he could, he employed the very catholic beneficences of a split meal sack which the cook also used as a towel. Then he prowled among the bed rolls. After certain rummagings, he presently emerged clad in a brand-new pair of the light-colored trousers, with heavy stripes of black, which then made Texan apotheosis of male splendor. He even added a brilliant tie, which in good sooth represented the heart hunger of Cinquo Centavos, and almost his last dime. Dalhart was a ruthless man. What he found to his notion in the several war bags he took, trusting to be able to explain.
Oiled and curled as best might be in a cow camp, with a final sweep into better order of his strong sunburned beard, Mr. Dalhart at last walked straight across to Taisie’s bivouac, whither she had withdrawn. Without so much as by your leave, he ordered Taisie’s women to go on away.
“I’m top rod here just now, Miss Lockhart,” said he, “and I want to talk with you a little while. This is my first chance.”
The girl looked at him. She had been in tears. Her nerves were going. She was no longer the daring Taisie Lockhart, “dulce ridentem . . . dulce loquentem,” like the Lalage of Horace of old, always ready to chat and ready to laugh.
“Drive them away!” Her glance was toward the distant row of solemn black birds, advancing, hopping staring.
Dalhart dropped her tent flap into a screen. He found a bundle and seated himself, not invited.
“Miss Lockhart,” said he directly, “one way, I’m only one of your hands. In Uvalde, you could find out who I am.”
“I suppose so. You’re on point? That means my foreman thinks you know cows?”
“Yes. Now, Mr. Nabours and I been talking. We think we’ve been jumped by the Sim Rudabaugh bunch, of Austin. They don’t ever aim to let this herd git north, Miss Lockhart. They aim to break it up and git it headed west.
“They’ve got their own surveyors out—away west. We seen four camps of surveyors in west there this spring, where we was hunting strays. They’re locatin’ range by the hundreds of sections—waste land nobody has wanted. They’re scrippin’ it, ma’am. They want all the scrip they can git, and they done got it most all.”
He spoke of certain things. In his mind were certain other things. His bold eyes, virile, assertive, demanding, never left the alluring picture that Taisie Lockhart made for any man. She remained languid, indifferent.
“My father said Texas lands would go up. He was laughed at. You knew him—my father?”
“No’m; I didn’t know him personal. But all Texas knowed Colonel Burleson Lockhart fer a square man and a big man. This state needs him now; it shore does. We’ve got to clean up Austin, or Austin’s goin’ to take all Texas away from the Texans.
“Them folks don’t want you to git the first herd north, ma’am. They’ll drive that theirselves when they git things all fixed fer hit.”
The girl buried her face in her hands again. Her shoulders trembled. The night had left her much unnerved.
“Yes, Miss Taisie,” said the man’s voice, now gentle. “Yore paw didn’t come back from up north. Sim Rudabaugh did. He ain’t like us. He’s a heap smarter’n us Texans. He’s seed more and been around more. No tellin’ who’s in his gang. It takes a lot of big men to swing as big a deal as he’s got in mind. Now, there was Sher’f McMasters——”
“Don’t! Please don’t! And—what is it that brings you over here?”
“All right, I won’t. I was only goin’ to say, hit all works out fer to prove the general scheme Jim Nabours and me both has told you about—Rudabaugh! That man made his boast in Austin, ma’am, last year, atter he come back from up north, he’d have the last Del Sol cow. More! He said he was goin’ to ride up to Del Sol and knock on yore front door!”
“What?” She flashed a sudden glance of wrath.
“That’s all. Rudabaugh played to break you first. Then, when you hadn’t a way to turn—well——
“Miss Taisie Lockhart”—his voice now rang rather true, very humble—“it’s bad, your lookout. You’ve got all of us, yes; but like Jim said, twenty men ain’t the pertection of one, fer a woman.”
“But what is it that you mean?”
“Now, I got to talk straight. Would you choose to look up at me, please?”
She did not raise her face.
“Well, I throwed in with this trail herd because I’d saw you! I couldn’t turn back from goin’. I did allow that when we’d made yore stake for you and put you on yore feet independent, with all Del Sol and every Texan back of you, why, then—when I couldn’t take no advantage at all—then I was goin’ to tell you I was goin’ to marry you. I thought by then you’d be more used to seein’ me around.”
Silence. The ruddy crown of hair covered her hid face, reddened with outraged blushes. She rose, started away. He was at her side.
“Miss Taisie, this raid has changed the whole world in one night. It’s left you in danger. You don’t need twenty men! You need one! The trail’s no place for you, even married. But there’s a church at Fort Worth, and a Methodist preacher. We’ll be there afore long. That’s time for you to think it over.”
Anastasie Lockhart broke into a sudden hysterical laughter.
“Is it so funny, ma’am?”
“Yes!” she rejoined. “Fort Worth—that’s what Jim advised, too. But first he said Austin. And it—it was another man!”
“It was Del Williams! Did you tell him——”
“I’ve told him nothing! He has asked me nothing! That’s nothing to be discussed by you or me at any time! That will do!”
“Well, I couldn’t help it—me lovin’ you the minute I saw you, and follerin’ in because I couldn’t no ways help it; and you needin’ just one such a man like me, and all—and all——”
His voice broke a bit under the blow his astonishing male vanity had received. And who was she, an orphan, to hold herself so high, when here was an honest man, a Texan, like himself?
Suddenly he reached out a lean brown hand. Her beauty was too much for him. The girl shrank, caught a cupped hand against her temple, where lay still the illicit kiss of the dark.
“No! No! You must not! No! I need some one, yes. I do! But I can’t——”
“I kin wait, Miss Taisie. I allowed to wait till we’d sold yore cows. I just thought things had broke so maybe it’d be best if I didn’t wait.”
“Wait!” was all she could say.
Torn and unhappy, she bent her bright head once more. He was man enough to go away. When he was gone she reflected that he had been man enough to come.
And thereafter, in yet more wretched self-searching, she reasoned that, after all, her fate now had cast her into a world where a woman’s range of choice was very narrow. After all, who was she, to ask the fulfillment of the old dream of human happiness? She sought comfort in philosophy. It is poor comfort for a woman.