CHAPTER XVIIIFLOTSAM
THE morning advanced. The riders had begun to reassert the dominance of man and horse over horned kine. Band joining band, converging, controlled, the approaching dust clouds seemed to show that ruin had not been complete; that the salvage was larger than an inexperienced man would have hoped.
“They got anyways a thousand head there,” said Dalhart to the cook. He swung into saddle and rode out, meeting Nabours, who came ahead, throwing up a hand.
“Stop there, Dalhart! We got to tally in the findings. Knot your rope. The boys’ll set ’em through.”
The two wheeled apart. Slowly the herd was dribbled through between them, while the crude but efficient art of handling cows went on. Each sat his horse, facing the other. At each hundred he advanced a knot under his thumb. When the last steer had passed the two did not vary five head in the tally of the crowding mob of cattle.
“Eleven forty-six!” Nabours called. Dalhart nodded.
“I can’t be sure. I made her eleven fifty.”
Nabours grumbled. “It’s a start, no more. Go back and help the other boys, Dalhart. There’s a big holding yon way, about five mile toward the hills, besides this one. Bring ’em in.”
Del Williams rode to the cook fire and had a tin cup of coffee before he roped a fresh horse and changed his saddle. Before leaving he turned to Nabours.
“Was any of our boys off north, about three mile, Jim?” he asked.
“I don’t know. The run was mostly east.”
“Well, I seen sever’l men riding over towards the hills where I was at, about sunup.”
Nabours growled his own suspicions.
“Well, it might of been worse,” went on Williams. “I seen fifty head piled in one arroyo. I don’t know how many more there may be, further on; but the boys are gethering a good many at the aidge of the pecan bottoms where the creek runs. Golly-hemlock! We ain’t half made the herd yet! The boys’ll be bringing ’em in.”
“Now, Sinker!” The foreman turned as the boy horse wrangler came up, grinning diffidently. “Reg’lar vaquero, eh, hide pants and all?”
“Del said I could have his leggins,” the boy replied, blushing vividly. “Now, my pants was tore, and that there point man has got on my necktie. But please kain’t I leave my horses and go help round up? My horses won’t go fur.”
“Huh! Want to break in and be a full cow hand, eh? Your job’s on the remuda. But you can go ef you don’t stay over a hour, like yore maw used to say.”
The boy sang very loud as he rode off. He hoped she had seen the sprouting down on his cheek.
“I shore know what I’ll do,” he said to himself. “After this, nights, I’ll spread down, her side the camp. I’ll sleep the neardest of anybody to her, so’s’t I kin keep watch.”
Dust and noise, harbingers of more cattle coming in, twice more called Nabours and Dalhart to their tally stands.
“Well, anyhow, we got over twenty-five hundred head right now, and more in sight. Wait till Sinker and Sanchez comes in with their drag. Ef we get over thirty-five hunderd, that’s big enough for a herd to drive good. What’s a few cows? We can comb the whole country by to-morrer. They was too full to run fur, but they fanned on us.”
Nabours, under the influence of rest and coffee, began to relax.
“I’ll go over to Miss Taisie’s camp afore long,” said he, “and tell her we ain’t broke yet.
“But say, Mr. Dalhart, tell me”—he cast a quizzical look at the other’s rather spick-and-span appearance in contrast to his own—“was you maybe going to church? And you might let me know ef you put bear’s grease on your whiskers too.”
Dalhart, unmoved, stroked his luxuriant beard.
“Nem-mind,” said he. “What’s a man withouten a good baird? Kain’t no woman git away from a baird. Now, I riz whiskers sence I was twenty, and I allus noticed, ever I swep’ my baird acrost a gal’s face she was shore mine.”
“You ain’t got no gall hardly, have you?” rejoined Jim Nabours. “Well, keep in mind there’s sever’l you ain’t swep’ yet, ner ain’t apt to. Laigs is better’n whiskers in the cow game. Keep yore eye on that Sinker kid! He’ll make a cow hand.”
As to this prophecy of the old foreman, events bade fair verification. All the remainder of the day the bed-ground holding increased, and late in the afternoon came a last drove of trotting longhorns, urged on by the ambitious Cinquo, who had relieved faithful Sanchez, found watching a considerable bunch grazing while he himself awaited help.
“You’re living up to them hair pants, son,” was the foreman’s comment.
The full complement of hands now was in camp. The cook’s fire was glowing in its trench. Men were eating three meals in one—beans, corn bread, molasses. They talked, mouths full, contented. Not a man lost; maybe not over ten per cent of the herd gone; they thought the scrape well over. Even Nabours began to talk. It was these last comers, however, who had brought the biggest news.
“It was Sanchez found him,” broke in Cinquo in his repeated explanation. “When I seen him, too, he was daid, plumb daid. He ain’t none of our hands. He got kotched in the run where they piled over the bank.”
“That so, Sanchez?Quien es?” demanded Nabours of the old Mexican.
“Es verdad,” replied Sanchez. “Quien es? Yo no sais.Me, I dunno.” He shrugged a thin shoulder indifferently.
“Now, he was a heavy-set man, with sort o’ red face, maybe—sandy, anyhow—an’ he didn’t look like no real cow hand.” Cinquo was more explicit.
“No, but I’ll bet he was a real cow thief,” growled Nabours. “I’ll bet they was all around our camp, outside the herd, last night. Fools for luck. Well, anyhow, that makes two. Leave him lay where he’s at, the damned thief! I only wish it was Sim Rudabaugh or Mr. Dan McMasters!”
The losses, thanks to good cow work, bade fair to be far less than the morning had promised. Nabours thought next day the main herd could be pushed on northward, slowly, while a few men were held back, detailed for a last combing of the broken ground where the run gradually had faded out. True, the herd might tally out two or three hundred short—probably less than that. But a cow was only a cow. Besides that, a number of cows had come in that did not show the Fishhook road brand, as Del Williams mentioned to Nabours.
“You mean they don’t show it yet,” remarked that veteran. “We’re working for a orphant. A cow is only a cow, and these men in here wouldn’t mind ef oncet they seen the orphant.”
“I gathered them strays, er some,” broke in Cinquo. “Er me an’ Sanchez did. We brung in Ol’ Alamo, that big dun lead steer, an’ he brung in a lot o’ strays follerin’ him.”
“I got a damn good lead steer,” said Jim Nabours solemnly, helping himself to coffee. “Sinker, you got the nacherl makings of a cowman in you.”
The tired men, taking without a murmur the added sleeplessness of a full-night watch, made every safeguard against a repetition of the late disaster. The whole camp was sleepless. The cook kept his fire going all the night and fed the men as now and then they straggled in after the reassembled herd seemed safely bedded.
Even at Taisie’s camp little sleep was known. Old Anita nodded at her fire, but Milly was openly bellicose.
“Ah got a load in my gun fer dat triflin’ nigger Jim, Miss Taisie,” she declared; “but Ah done put another load down on top o’ hit. Ef ary man come snoopin’ roun’ yere in de dark agin Ah’m gwine to bust him wide open—Ah suttenly will!”
CHAPTER XIXTHE CATTLE RIEVER
OF THE mysterious night marauders who—to their own sorrow—had invaded the Del Sol trail camp, no further trace was gained or sought. They had vanished as though into thin air, and left behind no more than surmise and suspicion. To their dead, left on the field, no soldier’s honors were accorded. The embittered cowmen let them lie unburied.
The last gatherings of the scattered cattle having been concluded with such subtractions and additions as left old Jim Nabours not too ill satisfied, the great caravan passed on to the northward, day by day, like some vast millepede edging across the green surface of the unbroken sod—cows, horses, carts, flanking riders and keepers of the drag, all acting in their busy daily drama as though on a stage set upon some vast moving platform of the idle gods.
Perhaps two hundred miles, as nearly as they could guess at an unmapped and unfamiliar portion of their own state—a land by no means yet redeemed from savagery—still lay between them and the Red River, the Rubicon of that day, the northern boundary of Texas. Ten miles, twelve, once in a while fifteen miles a day, the great herd grazed and strolled, north and yet northward, unhurried by its guardians. Not so far ahead, now, the wholly unsettled Indian Nations; and at any time the chance of yet other depredations at the hands of the determined white savages, whom they dreaded more, and whose work, they felt sure, was not yet done. As they approached the Red River, still unmolested, their anxiety grew less. Could they have seen into the unsettled land ahead of them it might well have been more.
A wild enough scene it was, that made by Rudabaugh and his score of hard-bitten men in their own encampment the first night after they themselves, pushing swiftly on ahead of the Del Sol herd, which still made their objective, pulled up on a bit of broken ground at the naturally strategic point, the south bank of the boundary river. For a time they roughly had known or guessed what the trail herd had made in northering; but their own forced march to the Red had gained them nothing.
It was time, but the Del Sol herd had not appeared or left any trace of its whereabouts. The men in the rude bivouac—they had, in their haste, brought little with them beyond what their saddle horses carried—began to grumble.
“Well, how could I tell where they’d cross?” demanded Sim Rudabaugh irritably, in answer to some query. “They ought to cross here. This is right on the old Whisky Trail, due north of Worth and Bolivar. This is where Jess Chisholm used to cross when he headed for the Canadian. That’s why I pushed on in here.”
“Well, they didn’t. When they come to Bolivar last week they must have swung up the Elm towards the Spanish Fort, away in west. Good cowmen, they sure are. Anyways, they’ve give us the slip.”
“They’ve done nothing of the sort, Hanson,” retorted the leader of the band. “There’s nobody gives Sim Rudabaugh the slip.”
“Well, they’re north of the Red by now, like enough.”
“Don’t you think it! The Red’s up, almost bank full. No herd could ford it. Besides, even if they was north of the Red, I reckon we know the Nations better than they do, and can do more with the tribes. If they get too far west they’ll hit the Comanches. They’re not done with this trail yet.
“Not that I want their damned cows now,” he added. “We’d make more by going back to Palo Pinto and working up the Brazos. But it’s not every herd that has a hundred miles of scrip along with it in a box. Once word comes down that a herd’s been sold at Abilene, that scrip’ll go up, and go up fast.”
“And then besides!” grinned another man.
“And then besides, yes! There never was a man I hated worse than Burleson Lockhart. I’ll follow him beyond the grave. Scrip I take from him now, or from his family, is worth to me five times over, even now he’s dead. And his daughter——”
Followed some low obscenities from his followers which did not abash the ruffian chief.
“Follow me and you’ll see yet,” he resumed. “I’ve never yet quit. It’s easy to cross here if we have to, and follow the Arbuckle Trail along the Washita. They go twelve miles a day. We can go fifty. We can head them when we please. I don’t intend that herd shall ever see Abilene. No, nor I don’t aim that any man on that herd’ll ever cross south of the Red again!”
The cold-blooded ferocity of the man silenced his followers, as always it did. They were all in one way or another allied in a vast and unscrupulous border conspiracy in a land to which little actual law yet had come. The dullest of them knew that their heyday would be brief, that events were moving fast. The swiftest horse and the surest hand, the boldest and most ruthless leadership—these were their hope. So they followed Rudabaugh, the real leading spirit of the predacious drifters who had seen in the disordered post-bellum political conditions a vast opportunity for gain in a dulled and disorganized land which did not yet suspect its own riches. Rudabaugh had imagination, saw far ahead.
“I swear!” he broke out in one of the half-epileptic fits of choler which sometimes marked him—he was only a pirate of old reborn in the blood of the Civil War—“I swear, some one’s got to suffer for some of this! Last night four Indians rode right into our camp and drove off six horses, and us needing every head we’ve got. You all hear me, now! I swear I’m going to shoot the first Indian I see north of the Red, I don’t give a cuss what sort it is. We’ve gone palavering along and letting a lot of longhorns shoot us up, and then we have the Chickasaws run circles around us.”
At first no one made reply, though a wild band they made, such as no other land, no other conditions, could have produced.
“Do you mean that, Sim?” asked one of them presently.
“You know damned well I do,” rejoined the leader. “You needn’t put it past me.”
To Rudabaugh, subterranean politician, soldier of fortune and renegade, no title or description could more nicely have been fitted than the one word “ruffian.” Of nondescript figure, perhaps of middle height, his body as well as his face showed dissipation written indelibly even for his age of forty-odd. His hair was dark, not yet much thinned, and had a reddish cast as though reflected from the deep floridity of his complexion. His eyes also were hazel to the point of redness, smudged and flecked in the pupils and evil to look at. His lips, thick and astonishingly red, carried out the misprized plan of his other features; he was coarse, common. Yet the inordinate personal conceit, confidence, vanity of the man had mirror in his clothing. Even on the trail he might have been made up for the stage villain, with the high boots, the velvet coat, the gaudy tie—in a borderland where tie or collar was not customary. Excess as much as daring was stamped on him, flamboyance, aberration; yet even at middle age he by no means had outgrown his earlier faith in his own invincibility with women; nor had his other activities put woman from his mind. His camp talk, not to be hinted, always gave proof of that.
To his unquestionable mental boldness, his daring imagination in material matters, Rudabaugh added the callous and ruthless indifference to the rights or sufferings of others which often secures precedence in a band of criminals. The bad eminence of Rudabaugh was conceded as of merit.
Of Rudabaugh’s earlier and possibly criminal record there was little known. Only a very few in his newly chosen home knew he had been border outlaw for many a year in a time when border outlaws really existed. His field lay in the shady confines of a circle comprising parts of Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and the unknown Indian Nations, always refuge for bad men and those restive under the law. Leader of an organized band of herd cutters on the Missouri-Arkansas border, on the very earliest cattle drives, before the railroads came, he had of late got visions of wider things. He had followed south, back-trailing, to the origin of the cows that first dribbled north. Credit him with conservative business sense; he had caught scent of profits to come in cows.
Working from these beginnings, Rudabaugh later had planned the most extensive range rieving ever known. No better nor worse than many a later man of large instincts and few principles who operated in trail beef, he had found in politics the most powerful agency possible in banditry. Once established as the covert boss of a wide state machine, he did not lack followers. If his activities and those of his like had much to do with the sudden stiffening and increase of the border constabulary of the Texas Rangers, his shrewd notion of tremendous effects on Texas of any valid railroad market also had weight in certain widespread Texas circles.
No doubt pique, baffled vanity, had much to do with the presence of Rudabaugh’s gang this far north; but as he had said just now, persistence was a characteristic of the man. One thing he did not share with any man. The image of Taisie Lockhart was in his blood. Whether he planned to rob her and flout her, to rob her and humble her, to rob her and then try to impress her with some large gesture of generosity, who could tell of a mind so insanely blurred and vague? At least, he remained resolved to follow the Del Sol herd and the Del Sol owner to the last mile of the trail unless sooner satisfied in one or more purposes of his own. Another quality of leadership—he could keep his own counsel.
“Well,” Rudabaugh vouchsafed at last, helping himself again to food at the fire, “they’ve only postponed things. So far, they’ve got two of us, and one of them Sam Barclay, my office deputy, and as good a man as I had.”
“Good on the books, maybe,” volunteered a voice, “but no good as a cowman. The Del Sol men rid it through and gathered, like enough, every cow except what landed on top of Sam. And they never dug a spade of dirt to cover him!” he added virtuously. “No way to treat a man. Why, them people is outlaws! And I’ll bet they’re crowing now over shooting Bentley!”
“They’re good cowmen,” commented Rudabaugh, after a long time. “We can’t take any chances with them, day or night. But I’ve got a few red friends between here and the Canadian that’ll help pickle their goose, I’m thinking. No white man yet ever scared a Comanche very bad, least of all old Yellow Hand, and I’ll bet he’s in the Nations right now. If we can find his band and show them four thousand beeves and two hundred picked horses I don’t think that herd’ll get much further north. Talk of a Cherokee outlet west to the buffalo lands—the Comanches’ll have something to say about a Texas outlet north! I think I’ll show something to our Del Sol friends.”
“You?” smiled a hearer. “Thought you said you’d kill the first Indian you saw north of the Red!”
“So I shall. I don’t throw a bluff and forget it. That’s only my private matter. I’m going to kill that Indian just as a matter of conscience.” He grinned.
“But before we move out of here,” he added, “we ought to get some word from our man McMasters. I’ve not seen hide or hair of him since he got run out of the Del Sol camp and came pretty near getting shot. He said he’d go on in alone and get the trunk out of the girl’s tent. Well, he didn’t. Anyhow he disappeared.”
“He’s always disappearing,” remarked another man. “He won’t work with us. I can’t line that fellow out.”
“Well, he told me he had to play both ends against the middle,” grumbled Rudabaugh. “But he ought to come in and report. I don’t mind a man being mysterious, but I don’t want him too damned mysterious. All I could do to trade with him, after that Ranger run-in on the Del Sol, before he moved north with the herd.”
Had it been known, the bandit camp was not alone beset with puzzles and problems. That very week, a few nights earlier, in the encampment of the Del Sol herd, old Anita at dawn brought to her mistress in her own little tent a note, folded, addressed to no one, in the handwriting of an educated man—a handwriting she had never seen.
“El caballero vien’ aqui, señorita,” said Anita calmly, as she handed over the folded paper. “Esta noche, heem vien’ aqui.”
“He came to-night, Anita? Who came—what man? And what is this?”
“Yo no sais,” replied Anita. “I dunno. He’s tall-a man,si. He come-a mycarreta, shake-a me soft, while Sanchez he’s on da herd. He say, give-a dis tola Señorita. But s’pose-a I make-a some holler, he goin’ choke-a me sure! I dunno some more.”
Anita said nothing of a coin at that time tied in the corner of her underskirt. Indeed, she thought it just as well Sanchez should not know. As for her mistress, she might do her own guessing; she could read Americano, whereas, herself, Anita, could not.
The communication was impersonal, detached, as Anastasie Lockhart found. She hurried at once to her trail boss; and if she had any guess in her own mind she kept it there.
Above Fort Worth village, head due north, to Bolivar. Then don’t go on to the Station—swing northwest up the Elm. Cross near the Spanish Fort. Feel west then for the Beaver. Then run by the North Star six hundred miles. Good water and grass. You can make all crossings. Time about two months. Keep west of the Whisky Trail. Herd cutters and thieves. Watch out all the time for Indians.
Above Fort Worth village, head due north, to Bolivar. Then don’t go on to the Station—swing northwest up the Elm. Cross near the Spanish Fort. Feel west then for the Beaver. Then run by the North Star six hundred miles. Good water and grass. You can make all crossings. Time about two months. Keep west of the Whisky Trail. Herd cutters and thieves. Watch out all the time for Indians.
Which, to a trail boss wholly without map, guide or knowledge of the far and unknown country of the north on ahead, must have seemed a godsend, even lacking authenticity or origin.
CHAPTER XXTAKING TOLL
UNTIL now Jim Nabours, Texan native born and, barring his travels under General Kirby Smith, of small experience abroad, had been in the habit of regarding his own horizon as sufficient. He had yet to learn a thing or two to show him how swiftly customs were changing in the Lone Star State. In a general way he had heard of “river improvements,” paid for in Texas land scrip, but as to details in that new and pleasing form of plunder he had little knowledge and no concern.
Neither had he ever heard of cattle inspecting—yet another form of graft devised in Austin, where more was known or foreseen of the coming cattle hegira than anywhere else in Texas. Furthest of all now from his suspicions was the fact that a gentleman by name of Jameson, well accredited in the current administration, combined in his person the duties of president of a certain “Land and Improvement Company” and of State Cattle Inspector as well; and that this same Jameson that spring was engaged with a small party of his own on a wilderness trip, scouting up and down the Red, in search of towhead snags that might be pulled, or of passing cattle that might be inspected, to the glory of God, as the first Spanish improvers and inspectors of that country once would have phrased it. Commerce sometimes becomes religion, as religion sometimes becomes war.
There always lacked explicitness in the story of the Del Sol crossing of the Red River. Jameson—owner of fat contracts in river improvements and cattle inspector by the grace of the carpetbag imperator at Austin—could bring no imposing narrative of himself and his deeds in connection with the advent of this apparition of thousands of wild long-horned kine, handled by a concourse of wild men, which one day broke out of the blackjacks near his camp. That was the Del Sol herd; but Jameson, being only a cattle inspector, could not be supposed to notice the T. L. and Fishhook brand.
It was Nabours himself, riding ahead to scout the approach to the high south bank, who had stumbled across the new camp of the inspector and his men.
“How, friend?” the herd foreman saluted. Jameson came forward.
“Which way?”
“North”—succinctly.
“North? Across the river? That’s the Indian country.”
Nabours grinned.
“Shore it is.”
“North? But who are you?”
“Sincet you ask me, friend, I’m foreman of the Fishhook, four thousand head, bound for Aberlene, wherever in hell that is. You ever done hear tell of the old Chisholm road?”
“The Chisholm Trail? Why, that’s away in east. He crossed either at Colbert’s or at the Red Station—the Station’s usual. You’re off your road forty or fifty miles.”
“Am I?” said Jim Nabours innocently. “Sho! That’s too bad! Well, maybe we can sort of cut in on the trail north of here somewheres, huh? I got a high-trained old oxen, name of Alamo, a old mossy horn raised by General Santy Anny, and he allows we cross in here somewheres. He knows where at’s Aberlene. Do you?”
Jameson frowned at levity. Then suddenly his chest swelled.
“Well, lucky enough you happened to hit my camp,” said he. “You broke in west, here, to escape the law!”
“Law? What law?”
“Well, you’re trying to move cows across the Red, off the soil of Texas, and not have the herd inspected.”
“Inspected? We done inspected ’em several times. They’re all right.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. The law provides a fee for the proper inspection of all cattle moving off their own range—checking up and recording the brands, looking to see they’re all in the same road brand, accounting for strays, and so forth. Looks to me like you are trying to evade the fees. Well, I’m the state inspector for this district.”
“That so? You aim to collect something?”
“Yes, certainly. I’ve got to look over your herd before you cross; that’s my duty. I may have to turn you downstream, to the regular crossing. You don’t belong in here, and you know it. Where’s your herd?”
“Back below the blackjacks, on the Elm,” responded Nabours promptly, a gleam in his gray eye that the other did not note. “How’d it do for you to ride back with me and have a look at our outfit where the herd is made?”
Jameson turned back to his own men, a half dozen ague-smitten whites, and ordered his horse brought up. When he mounted to ride south with the innocent stranger of the trail he made one of the capital errors of his career in the new country of Texas, and one which he never saw fit to describe in full to his chief, Rudabaugh, when at last he had reached the latter in his own camp.
In a more open valley they came in sight of the great T. L. herd, scattered over two miles of country, grazing or lying at rest. A dozen riders lolled, leg over saddle horn, themselves a-doze, waiting for the foreman’s return.
“Ain’t it purty?” said Nabours, the real cowman’s love of cows in his speech. And it was a noble sight, this wild picture in a wild land. Any way one looked there was no edge to the world.
But Jameson was more businesslike.
“Well, now,” said he, “it is a good bunch. How many did you say you had?”
“Thirty-eight hunderd and sixty-five, we made our last tally,” answered the T. L. foreman, the glint again in his eye. “Why?”
“Well, now, I never want to make bother for a good cowman,” Jameson answered. “It’s true you’re off your course, but maybe that’s natural. I’ll just take your own count and let you go. You can pay me the fee and I’ll not bother you any more at all.”
“Won’t even ride in amongst the herd to look at the brands, nor nothing?”
“Why, no! What’s the use? I can trust men like you. Just pay me the fee and let her rip.”
“And how much is the fee, Mister Inspector?”
“Nothing at all, you might say—two bits a head. Taking your own count—let’s see; call it thirty-six hundred head for easy figuring. Divide her by four. Nine’s a nine and naught’s a naught—she comes to nine hundred dollars. Ought to be a cold thousand; but as I said, that’s nothing amongst men like us. Give me that and I’ll let you go and never take another look. I’ll trust a man like you.”
Jim Nabours had played in many a game where one does not display his emotions. He set his face now, almost suppressing the dull red that took over the gray glint of his eye. The sum of nine hundred dollars was the same as nine million to him. There was not a hundred dollars, even of Mexican make, in all the convoy, and he knew that.
“Like you say, that’s little enough,” said he. “Two bits a throw ain’t worth talking over, not amongst men like us. But just for sake of friendship, let’s ride on over to our wagon and have a cup of coffee—you orto see how pore it is.”
He spoke with a finality hard to evade. The other rode alongside. A quarter of a mile, and Nabours threw up his hand. Del Williams swung away from his stand and came up at a gallop. Nabours had loosed his rope.
“Del,” said he, “this is Mr.—I dunno.”
“Jameson; Henry D. Jameson, of Austin, gentlemen.”
“And he says he’s the cattle inspector on the Red. It costs us two bits a head to cross the river, Del. It ain’t much, only nine hunderd dollars. And so——”
“Nine hun——” But Del Williams did not finish.
The rope which Jim Nabours idly had uncoiled suddenly shot out behind him with a quick side flirt. It settled fair around the neck of Henry D. Jameson, the first cattle inspector Texas ever knew. The next instant the aforesaid Henry D. Jameson was out of his saddle, his hands clawing grass as he slid along the ground, choking very rapidly. Del Williams on chance laid his own rope on the neck of the Jameson horse, which seemed a good one.
“You damn thief! You low-down, lying son of a ’niquity, you!” The wrath of Jim Nabours, smoldering a half hour, now flamed. His tongue waxed unprintable while in two composite languages of the Southwest he cursed Henry D. Jameson till his own face was as red as that of his victim was empurpled. Del Williams, gun in hand, followed close, his cue obvious.
“Git up, damn you!” at length croaked the foreman. “You stand up! You’ll charge Texas men for wetting their girths in a Texas river, will you? Pay you nine hunderd dollars? We’ll see you and all Austin in hell before we’ll pay you a damned cent. Come on now quiet, or we’ll leave you plumb quiet. Come along! It’s lucky we ain’t got no fire lit or I’d run a Fishhook on you for luck.”
“Don’t shoot him, Del. But what’ll we do with this, now we got it?”
The men on guard saw the sudden commotion. A half dozen came, jerking up, ropes a-swing, eager. A vast Cossack laughter rose when Nabours explained.
“Prop up a cart tongue!” called Len Hersey.
But the victim now noted the sudden apparition of a slender figure astride a singular white-hipped horse, coming up at a gallop.
“What’s this, men?” demanded Taisie. “What are you doing there?”
“Ma’am,” said Jim Nabours, now more calm, “we ain’t doing nothing much. We’re just going to hang a damned thief that wants to colleck two bits a head on our cows for swimming the Red River.”
“But what—but why?” Taisie’s own brow puckered.
Jameson found speech, even in his surprise, for now he saw this was no slender boy at all.
“Madam,” said he, a noose lying on his shoulder and one hand at it, “these men have resisted the law. I am the lawful inspector for this district. I have come here in the pursuit of my duty.”
“You’ve got a dangerous duty,” said Taisie Lockhart straitly. Her own soul was Texan. “Inspect us, charge us—for what?”
Jameson tried to explain.
“Shut up! We’re wasting time!” broke in Nabours, jerking the rope. “We ain’t got nine hunderd dollars; and if we had we wouldn’t give you nor no man a copper cent to ride this range ary way we like.
“What’ll we do with him, boys?” He turned again to his men. “Ef we let him go he may start something. Hyenuses runs in bunches. What’ll we do?”
“That’s a question!” scoffed Dalhart. Len Hersey again named the wagon tongue; but Taisie Lockhart raised a hand.
“No!” she called. “No! Wait!”
“We can’t wait, ma’am,” said Nabours. “We’re wasting time. The Red’s running full now and maybe raising every hour for all we know. We can’t wait here.”
“Then—tie him and leave him!” suddenly spoke the saddle Portia. “Leave him here—his friends may find him.”
“Aw, hell!” said a voice. It was that of Cinquo Centavos, the horse herd. Nabours turned to him.
“Sinker, go get a couple of hobbles.” The boy rode off.
“What are you going to do to me?” began Jameson. “I warn you——”
“Don’t warn us none!” rejoined Nabours. “Ef you do we’ll kill you. Keep your mouth shut! The girl’s the only thing saved you.”
“Yon’s a nice cactus stand, boys,” he resumed, his face relaxing as he looked around. “Hog-tie him and throw him in the cactus, deep as you can. Ef he tries to get out plug him.
“That’s yore sentence, Mister Cow Inspector, and it looks like God has had mercy on yore soul. Ef you get out don’t try charging no more Texas men for riding over the free lands. They won’t have it. Quick, boys! Don’t waste no more time.”
Portia rode away, not knowing exactly how far her authority really would go with her wild crew. As she passed, her ears were assailed with the supplications of Henry D. Jameson, bound hand and foot and exceedingly full of cactus spines.
Whereby may be seen the very natural reason for his enmity and his desire for revenge when he was found the next day by his own men. He voiced the same emotions, though he did not give full details, when he joined the freebooter camp of Rudabaugh, far to the east, when later he had found those friends.
CHAPTER XXITHE RUBICON
NOW it was noon of the next day. The cattle had been pushed close to the south bank of the great mysterious river. The foreman sat with his employer on the steep crest of the ravine selected as the take-off for the ford. A bridge had never been, a ferry no man had dreamed of here. Flowed only the wide sweep of tawny waters, boiling and fretting, bearing rape of far-off flats, tree trunks rolling and dipping.
The Red was up! This was an ominous and savage scene, and one to depress even the boldest heart; for over this flood must pass each horned head ever to find a market in the north.
To Anastasie Lockhart, whitely looking out over the mad waters, this seemed the very end. It did not appear possible to cross. It never would have seemed possible to Nabours had he been of longer trail experience or less desperate in view of other dangers which might come again if they tarried here indefinitely. A freshet of less extent later was known to hold back a hundred thousand cows. But Jim Nabours now had made up his mind to take a chance.
“I’m going to throw the carts over first, ma’am,” said he. “Then I’ll cross the cows. I’m going to hold the horses back this time. Then, after the last head’s over, a lot of us’ll cross back after you. We’ll know the channel and the bars better then. Don’t you be a-scared. We’ll get you over somehow. That’s how I got it figgered, ma’am.”
“She’s up, Jim,” said Taisie quietly. She was trying her very best to be brave.
“Yep, some. But she’s fell a foot since last night. She shows a bar, a quarter below, and a low flat that edges in shaller on the fur side. I think that’s the real bank, and like enough hard footing.”
“We could wait a week, maybe. She might raise and she might fall. We’ll soon know how deep she is. I don’t reckon she’s not over two-three hunderd yards actual swimming—I can’t tell. I don’t want to wait here. You know why.”
“Can we make it, Jim?” asked the girl soberly.
“I think we can, ma’am,” said the old foreman as quietly. “Ef I didn’t, do you s’pose I’d throw ’em in? She has been crossed by cows, down below, for the Arkansaw market. Yore own paw has crossed her. Can’t we? If Jess Chisholm, or any of the Chickasaw whisky runners, could cross her with stock so can we. Huh? I’m a good cowman, ma’am, and I got the best bunch of hands ever pushed a foot in a stur’p.”
Taisie Lockhart turned on him the sober gaze of her steady eyes, but made no reply at the time.
“Jim!” Suddenly she turned on him.
“Ma’am?”
“Jim! I’ve got no one else—I’ve got to come to you. Cal Dalhart asked me to marry him—again, to-day.”
“Well, you didn’t, and you can’t. The last minister was at Forth Worth. There’s others of the same mind, Taisie. Has Del Williams spoke? Dalhart’s lied.”
She shook her head.
“Poor Del!” said she. “So quiet.”
“Well, he done spoke to me more’n oncet. He allows, and so do I, that no man had orto talk a word to you about no such thing until after he ain’t working for you no more. That’s until after Aberlene. That’s the way Del put it. I liked it of him. Cal Dalhart’s a leetle brash, to my notion.”
“Why do women always make trouble, Jim? I’m making trouble right here. I’ve made it from the start.”
“Well, ma’am, Eve, she begun it right at the real start. They always done so, since. I got to pass word again there can’t be no courting on the Fishhook herd, not till after Aberlene, ma’am. I told you to get married and go back home; but you wouldn’t. Now, see where you are! Time enough for marrying and giving in marriage, ma’am, ef we ever get to Aberlene. Ef we don’t we’ll not need study about that nohow. Huh?”
“I’ll be good, Jim,” said Taisie, smiling.
But when once more she looked at the river she did not hope ever to see Abilene. She classed herself now as the last of the Texas Lockharts. She would not disgrace the name.
Ticklish work it was, and asking alike resource and courage; but methodically as though they had done nothing else in all their lives, the men of Del Sol went about it now.
Under Nabours’ direction they got together long logs of cottonwood drift, dragging them in at the ends of their lariats, cowman fashion. Taking the cook cart for their first experiment, they lashed some of the longer logs under the body, unbolting the tongue. The clumsy vehicle was heavily loaded. How much of swimming water there would be none could tell; but their philosophy was wholly empirical. Nabours turned back at the edge of the water.
“Keep right after me, men, and keep her a-coming!” he called to the riders who now were in readiness to take the water. “Don’t try to hold her against the current. Let her slide down, and keep your horses swimming. Ef we make that bar we’re all right.
“You, Del, go upstream in front—Cal, get in front below. You’ve got the hind rope upstream, Len, and Sanchez, you go downstream. Keep her going just like it was on the ground. She’d orto float some anyway. Come on now!”
He spurred into the rolling discolored stream. His horse, snorting and trembling even at the brink, within five yards of the steep bank was in swimming water; but he headed straight across, gallantly, though carried steadily downstream.
Stripped to their underclothing, and minus their pistol belts, the men spurred in. With a sudden plunge the unwieldy craft took the water at the rear of the horsemen.
“By golly, she floats!” called out a voice on the shore.
Cal Dalhart flung up a hand with a yell. Old Sanchez crossed himself industriously. But all four of the horses, muzzles flat and nostrils blowing, followed as best they could the leader who swam ahead, his saddle horn still showing high. That it was all a mad endeavor, no sane man could have doubted. But Providence was ever kind to men who dare.
Those remaining on shore watched the strange procession in absolute silence. Taisie covered her eyes. The plan of the crossing had much good judgment in it, but only extreme good fortune ever could give it success. By some kind impulse of its own, the current began to carry the clumsy contrivance toward the head of the sand bar at midstream, scarcely more than visible above the surface, but offering great hope to the swimming horses. The silent watchers at last saw the horse of the leader plunge upwards and get footing. The two lead horses followed, all of them still belly deep. The length of the reatas of the rear men allowed them also to get footing while the great wheels of the cart, hanging below the edges of the raft, remained floating free. The power of five horses, even with soft footing under them, finally enabled the men to drag it to floating water beyond the head of the bar. To their relief it found temporary anchorage when the wheels caught bottom.
Nabours sat his half-submerged horse, looking studiously out across the remaining waterway.
“Hold on here, boys, till I try her out,” he commanded. “I think from here acrost she’s sorter flat. Ef she won’t float the cart, cut out the logs, splice your ropes and fetch one on acrost to me so we can yank her through.”
They got floatage for a little way out from the bar, but presently the raft became a liability and not an asset for them. They cut log after log free and let it run downstream. Nabours’ horse was no more than belly deep ahead of them. Four hide reatas, each of forty feet and all spliced, at last gave them connection with the solid shore. With a great shout they yanked the first cart up the farther bank.
Nabours rode up to the front of his amphibious vehicle and disclosed Buck, the negro cook, who had been praying on the floor of the cart, up to his knees in water part of the time, and now still of grayish complexion under his natural pigmentation.
“What’s the matter with you, boy?” he demanded. “Climb down out of there, now, and get things ready for a meal against we get the next cart acrost.”
It was necessary for the five men to recross the river. After a long study of both shores for a take-off, they concluded to wade down to the head of the bar, cross the swimming water from that point, and to land below the original take-off on the south shore, at a point where the high bank flattened. Two of the five men knew almost nothing of swimming. Each man put his life upon the strength and courage of his horse. Their work was there and it had to be done. They eased their mounts by slipping out of saddle, swimming downstream and taking tow, one hand clinging to a saddle thong.
It is enough to say that they did make the recrossing. Taking advantage of the rebound of the current from the bar, they found footing on the south bank perhaps a quarter of a mile below the original take-off. Wet, half-naked, they all whooped on up to the ford head, where all the remainder of their company were huddled.
“She’s all right, Miss Taisie!” yelled out Nabours. “We can do it plumb easy. You stay here where you are. I’m going to put Milly and Anita in the next cart. We’ll swim you over special, on horseback. That’s a heap safer’n any boat. All you got to do is just to set still on your horse and let him alone.”
The delay with the second cart was but short. Old Milly, on her knees in the sand hysterically supplicating her deity, was forcibly assisted to the seat where already Anita, patiently telling her beads, was seated, a-waiting fate.
Again they pushed out; once more they made the head of the bar; and this time, with even less difficulty than at first, finished the second half of the crossing. For the second time, wet to the skin, the men crossed back, cursing the luck which had brought them here to meet high water, but as yet meeting with no mishap. Nabours looked dubiously at the horses, which had made the crossing twice. The men refreshed themselves with hot coffee and a hurried bite to eat. The farther camp now was made, so there would be coffee at each end of the crossing.
But now they must address themselves to the tremendous experiment of crossing the herd. True, these had had swimming water at the Colorado, the Brazos, the Trinity; but in each case the farther shore was well in view of the take-off and the swimming channel narrow. What would the cattle do now, facing a moving sea of roily water?
“Ready with them fresh horses, men!” called Nabours. “Point the herd in here. Make them take water just back of me, and throw ’em in spreaded. All of you act just like it was on the ground. Take your points, you, Cal and Del! All you swings, ride right above and below just like you was on the trail. They’ll swing down plenty in the current. Take it easy and quiet. If any of you gets scared them cows’ll be scared too. Ef they begin to mill it’ll be hell for every one of us; so keep ’em spread out and moving. Here’s where we make a cap or shore spoil a coonskin.”
With cracking of horns and tossing of heads, the front of the herd came shuffling down the shallow draw to the edge of the water, led by a few lank and rangy steers, old Alamo, the accepted lead steer, still in front. They were creatures alert and wise as deer, true longhorn stock of the lower range. Something of the wild instinct blended with their recent practical education. Crowded by the numbers pushed against them from the rear, old Alamo shook his head for half an instant, then bent his knees and plunged in, following the swimming horse on ahead. Some men still rode the same mounts. Now and then a man lightened ship, by slipping out of saddle for a time.
One by one, by fives and tens and scores, the other cattle followed the lead thus established. The inshore leg of the long moving U passed out and down, the cattle swimming steadily, gently, their muzzles level, their tails spread. They knew well enough where they were to land.
The stream of the herd seemed almost endless, but when the great U once was established—the cattle finding footing on the bar at midstream and wading over the shallows beyond—the line of action was perfectly apparent to every animal as it was pushed up to the river brink. They took the water as had those before them, and formed a continuous living line across the river. It was a magnificent spectacle. It was a triumph of personal courage combined with knowledge of the art of cows. But surely fate aided in this first and riskiest crossing of the Red by any herd passing northbound to the rails.
There was little need of guidance after the first of the herd had reached the bar in midstream, and here some of the riders turned back to the south shore, riding up to the take-off. Again and again they took the water below the swimming stream of cattle. They could see the long line of the cattle elevate itself like a great parti-colored snake at the bar, thence writhing along as though upon the ground, and fully visible as it topped the farther shore. The great adventure seemed in a fair way to conclude itself upon the side of courage.
The old Del Sol foreman was a good cowman, as good as the next, and there were few phenomena in the trade of cows with which he was not familiar. One might have seen him all that day looking up anxiously at the sky. The heavens were dull and overcast; a bad day to put cattle at a ford. Rain portended; for long there was no glimpse of the sun. But had there been any glimpse of the sun the veteran foreman would never have pushed his herd into the river late in the afternoon, for a reason which any trail man would have understood.
At that point the river ran almost north and south, so that the course of the cattle was almost westward. In the evening any rays of the sun would lie like a path across the water.
But cattle will not swim into the sun. No good trail boss ever undertook to cross a herd into a sunset. The one hope of Nabours was in a continuous cloudiness of the evening sky. He did not want the sun to shine.
But now, as he turned his own anxious face toward the west, he saw a greater definition of the piling clouds. The lower edge of yonder heavy bank was tinged with silver. By and by the sun would drop through. Then its light would lie across the water, straight into the eyes of the swimming cattle.
The sudden oath of old Jim Nabours had many factors in it—pity for what he knew might happen, regret for his own hastiness, apprehension for the property which was not his, resentment at what seemed to him an unjust fate and a poor reward for the courage which his men had shown. Nature, always merciless, now seemed mockingly vindictive.
No act of man could affect that which was now to happen. The almost level rays of the sun did fling their burnished path across the yellow waters. It was cast straight into the eyes of the drag, some three or four hundred animals which had not yet crossed the swimming channel. It half blinded for a moment even the eyes of the men. A floating log came down among them, caught the upper cattle, swung crosswise.
The line broke. There was a great uptossing of horns, a jumbling of shoulders as some animals attempted to find floatage on the backs of others. The spaces were lost, the bodies were packed together in a mass, struggling, moaning—and steadily passing downstream. The dreaded swimming mill was on!
Little enough could the bravest or most skilled men do now. What men could do, the two riders now caught in the mill attempted. They did not try to swim free of the mass, but drove into it, attempting to break and point out the mill so that the cattle would find footing somewhere below. At times the head and shoulders of their ponies showed, climbing upon the shoulders of the swimming cattle, the men beating with their quirts, kicking, urging, shouting. But the cattle would not swim into the sun.
Those upon the nearer shore heard the sound of the rush of waters and a combined low moan, indescribable. It was hopeless. Not the best efforts of the entire company could have broken that fatal midstream mêlée. As though in a dream, Taisie Lockhart, wringing her hands, stood dumb and saw go forward one of the sudden tragedies of the trail.
“Leave them go, men! Come back! We can’t save them now! Come on out!” Nabours ordered back his men on the farther side of the bar.
They stood looking at the moving mass which made a dark blot below the bar, where the current once more headed for the east. Neither head of horse nor man long showed above the floating island.
“That was Dan and Billy,” said Jim Nabours, the first tears in his eyes any man had seen there. “I done it my own self! Look at that sun!”
It was dusk when he and half a dozen of his best men once more rode up the shore to the take-off. Taisie met him, sobbing unreservedly. The veteran herdsman himself could not speak.