CHAPTER XXVITHE INDIAN NATIONS
NO blue smoke rose against the far horizon of the wild paradise through which these pioneers of a new industry were passing. Civilized, semi-civilized, even savage mankind lacked then in the Nations. The country was unsettled and unknown. The men of Del Sol neither followed nor intersected any trail of hoof or wheel. Only the deep paths of the buffalo, immemorial, marked the green carpet of unbroken sod. There never had been hoof of any domestic creature here. The bands of horses that swept away were wild horses. Wild deer, wild antelope made their only neighbors. There was not a weed. There was not a bee. The white man had not come.
Of them all, not one Del Sol man had any idea of the country ahead. They were only holding to the easiest way, the ridges that separated the heads of divergent streams.
Nabours held his silence as long as he could, but at length spurred up to the morose and solitary man who rode without a word regarding the herd, himself or his own plans.
“Mr. McMasters,” said he, “I don’t know where we are right now. I don’t know where we’re going. We haven’t got no map. I don’t know when Rudabaugh may jump us. It’s time you and me got plumb serious.”
“Yes, I think so.”
“For instance, we ain’t on no Chisholm Trail?”
“No, that’s over in east, if it can be called a trail. Fort Sill—that’s what they call the camp where the soldiers stop, in west toward the Wichita Mountains—is the nearest white settlement. It’s only a camp; there is no actual Army post there yet.”
“My notion, soldiers mostly ride around and don’t do nothing much.”
“They’d do more if they were let alone by the Indian Department. Those men are doing what Captain Marcy advised fifteen years ago—figuring on an Army post north of the Red, to watch the Comanches.
“The worst Comanches, as you know, are the Quahrada bands—that’s old Yellow Hand. Their right range is north of the Buffalo Gap and west into the Staked Plains; that’s their big buffalo country. But I think word has gone out for some kind of a council between them and the Kiowas, and that’s what has brought Yellow Hand in here.
“The policy of the Indian Department now, as you may know,” he went on explaining, “is to round up all these Indian tribes and get them on reservations. That’s going to mean war, next year probably. This whole country in here is just as like as not to be on foot right now. The best hope we’ve got is that none of them get together with Rudabaugh.”
“That’s fine, ain’t it? And you done told me that Rudabaugh was heading in ahead to meet us.”
“He doesn’t know where we are any more than we know where he is. If we keep on north and he keeps on up the Washita we’d naturally intersect at the crossing of the Washita, two or three days’ drive north of here. I don’t know which will get there first. He travels light.”
“What d’you think I’d ought to do?” demanded Nabours, after a time.
“There is not much you can do. When you go into camp every night set your wagon tongue so that it points toward the North Star. Line out on that course the next morning. Keep on going north for a month. What comes, comes. But keep your herd closed up.”
“Well, I done sont my cook cart on ahead a ways,” admitted Nabours. “I told Sam to kill a buffalo and pick out a good camping place, if it looked anything like a bed ground.”
“What comes, comes,” said McMasters once more.
They separated, since he would talk no more. He rode apart from the herd, would accept no duties, no friendships, never cast a glance toward the closed cart where Taisie had taken refuge.
Nabours hardly had resumed his place at the head of the column before he found cause enough for actual alarm. On ahead there was coming toward him the white top of the cook cart, its oxen lashed to a gallop by the negro driver. Buck made no attempt to stop his vehicle, but thundered by with the evident intention of getting as far to the rear as possible. The shrieks of Milly, who had gone on in the cart, rose continuously. Nabours was obliged to ride ahead to bring the cart to a halt.
“What in hell do you mean by this?” demanded he of the frightened negro.
“Fo’ Gawd, Massa Jim, don’t go up dah! Dey’s five thousand Injuns right up dah! Dey’s a million buffaloes not two mile ahead, beyant the woods, and them Injuns is a cuttin’ and a chargin’!”
“Go on down to the other cart and pull up close!” commanded the trail boss. “Hurry, now!” He spurred off to the point of the herd.
“Throw ’em off the trail, men!” he called out. “Make the herd right here! Injuns! Get your rifles out!”
In ten minutes the strip of prairie was covered a half mile deep with a mass of cattle, and the remuda was closed up at the rear. The men made a rude laager of the bed rolls in front of the carts and ordered the women to keep hid. So far as might be, they were ready for what must come.
It came soon. The cattle shuffled as they stood, turned, raised their heads. A thunder of countless hoofs grew loud, louder. And now became visible, close at hand, one of the wild spectacles of the tribesmen’s country. A vast black mass of running buffalo appeared, strung out in little clumps as far as the eye could reach. Heads down, their beards sweeping the grass tops, they ran, an endless series of black, rolling forms, in a tremendous momentum that shook the very sod—the wildest picture of a wild world.
The men who immemorially owned that world were here. Naked horsemen clung on the flank of the herd. It was the Comanches, at the savage trade which the Comanches most loved and best practiced—that of lancing the wild buffalo.
A half hundred, perhaps a hundred riders, stretched out in a long line—in fact a line two miles or more in length. The savages, stripped to the waist, rode their bareback horses alongside and into the detached masses of black which stretched west and north out as far as the horizon. Even in the distance and in the dust they might have been known to be Comanches, since they thus were at work with the lance. That was always the favorite Comanche weapon in the buffalo hunt.
Nothing imaginable could be more cruel or more efficient than their trade as these wild riders now were practicing it. Each spearman rode even with his chosen quarry. It was not his purpose to strike it in the vitals, but only to disable it. A hunter leaned sideways suddenly, plunging, both his arms raised. A lunge, a heave backward to wrench the point clear, and the great beast fell, cut through the loins; not killed at once, but sure to fall; which was enough for the savage workman. The old men or squaws following after with their bows and arrows would finish what the long lances had begun. To the rear a mile-long line of black struggling blots lay on the grass. But the blood lust of the riders had not yet been glutted.
Their chase was now to end. Their attention, rapt as they had been in the pursuit they loved above all others, could not now escape the sudden sound which broke upon their ears even over the hoof roar of the buffalo.
In a vast rush of crackling hoofs and rattling horns the entire Del Sol herd was now off in the wildest stampede any of the men had ever seen. Worst of all, they were not undertaking to evade but to join the stampede of the buffalo.
Always there was a sort of affiliation between the wild and the domestic cattle of the Plains; and all old plainsmen knew how difficult it was to separate the two, once they were commingled. This commingling of wild and half wild, with the attendant rumbling and trembling under the hoofs of all these thousands of running creatures, made a swift climax to the scene. The black mass, lengthened and strung out by the impact of the line of hunters, now was joined by a vast influx of lighter colored animals, coming in at an angle. Red men might take toll of this. White men could not control it. No men could stop it now.
The savages had ridden long. There was an endless line of black blots rising and falling on the prairies back of them. The stampede of the Del Sol herd was sufficient to break the trance of slaughter.
Spears in hand, naked, their arms red to the shoulders, their bodies red to the waist, a group of the riders broke away from their chase and came up, grinning and shouting, to where they saw the white men huddled. They had taken their time. The Comanches entertained but little fear of the whites. They were insolent lords of the far Southwest, raiding the feeble Mexicans as they liked and even imperiously telling the Anglo-Saxon frontiersman when he must cease advancing or even pull back his frontier lines. They always had held the best of the cattle range as well as the best of the buffalo range of Texas, and had kept the cowman out.
These had no fear now of the whites. They carried with them proof of that. Repeating their own tribal history of grim sense of humor, at some sutler’s store looted far to the west they had practiced one of the jests they had been known to employ in early border times. They had gathered bolts of flannel, bales of gaudy calico, from which they had liberally taken decorations for their horses. Not one of the latter that did not have attached to his mane and tail such strips of calico as long and rough riding had left him. It was the pleasant Comanche practice to tie one end of a bolt of cloth or calico to the tail of a horse and then to ride off, leaving the fabric to unwind as it listed and the horse to run as it chose. These wild decorations, unknown of origin, still clung in colored fragments to the blood-stained ponies which they rode. The ends of the prints fluttered in the prairie wind, mocking the flowers in their own remaining hues.
No herd of cattle could have withstood the sight of this wild phantasmagoria. The men who owned these felt that their own time had come. Without command, each man dropped low behind his bed roll, his rifle resting above his bent arm.
“Don’t let than in, men—but don’t shoot yet! They’ve got nothing but spears!”
It was the voice of Dan McMasters which arose. He alone of them all was standing, rifle in hand. He threw up his hand in the command to halt as the Red men came on in, slapping his rifle stock.
The Comanches paid little attention to any command, but made no immediate motion of hostility. Their leader was a great-chested man with wide chin and mouth and narrow eyes. Jabbering in his own tongue, two-thirds Spanish, he grinned as he came on close up to the rifles which covered him and his men. At length he threw up his own hand carelessly, indifferently, curiously, as though he now would see what was to be found hereabouts.
“How,amigo! How,amigo!” called out McMasters. No one had chosen him as leader, but none now denied him the place. “UstedYellow Hand?”
The leader rode out carelessly.
“Si,” said he. “Me Yellow Han’.Habla Español?”
“Si,” replied McMasters, and went on in that tongue.
After a few moments of rapid talk he turned.
“He says they are Quahradas, but are riding through, going home. Says he wants some spotted buffaloes. Says they are on Indian land and we have got to get out. Says we will have to give him half our horses and all our tobacco. Says he knows we have got something in the wagons because we keep the covers tight. Says we can’t go on through, but have got to go back.”
“You tell him to go to hell!” broke out Jim Nabours. “Tell him I know who he is. Yellow Hand has got no right in here. Tell him the soldiers will be after him for chasing the Chickasaws’ buffalo. Flour—beef—tobacco? Tell him we won’t give him a damned thing! Tell him if he rides ten feet further in we’ll open fire and clean ’em out—our rifles shoot a week and we don’t have to load.”
He patted the stock of the rifle which he held up before him in defiance—one of the Henry repeating rifles, first of repeating arms seen in the Southwest after the Civil War; and already the Comanches knew what these repeating rifles meant. Old Yellow Hand also knew that his men had nothing but their spears. He traded Comanche lives as dear as possible always. No doubt it occurred to him that he could get all the beef he wanted by following the stampede. Perhaps he figured that night time would be a better hour for an attack—when all his warriors were on hand.
“Heap shoot!” called out Jim Nabours, again slapping the side of his rifle. Yellow Hand grinned pleasantly.
“How! How! Heapamigo,” said he. He advanced a foot or so, his hand outstretched. “What you got incarreta?Que tienez?”
He motioned toward the closed fronts of the cart covers, pointing with his spear. McMasters’ rifle barrel struck up the spear shaft. Yellow Hand could see the hammers of the rifles lying down like the heads of so many rattlesnakes. He could see the light shining on the brass plates of these Henry rifles. Comanches on the Concho had told him that a rifle which had this yellow spot on it would keep on shooting forever without any need for loading again.
“Si, seguro!” he now said calmly. “Heap shoot!” He waved a hand towards the rifles. “Muy grande escopetas.Heap swap.Uno caballo por uno escopeta!” He meant he would trade a horse for a repeating rifle.
“Nada, damn your soul!” broke out Jim Nabours: “You vamose pretty damnpronto! I’m sorry I ever learned your damned language, but you hear me now.A doondey usted—where’d you come from here?”
“Nos vamenos, si.” said Yellow Hand ingratiatingly. “Poco tiempo.Swap?”
“You’ve got a gall,” rejoined Nabours, whose blood now was up as he began to think of what had happened to his herd. “Git on out or I’ll kill you for luck!”
The chieftain turned towards McMasters, whom he again addressed in Spanish. McMasters replied quietly, evenly, evidently arguing and pointing out certain facts which ought to be observed; which facts had to do with spears as against repeating rifles; with buffalo as against beef.
After a time Yellow Hand turned back to his followers, who had sat their horses impatiently. He spoke a few words in explanation. Then, without paying any more attention whatever to the whites, they all turned and rode away.
For the time safe, the white men arose and looked at one another, still almost too much strained for speech.
“Look yonder!” said Nabours at length.
Off to the west and north other Indians were appearing, group after group, evidently the followers who did the butchering of the fallen buffalo. With spears and bows and arrows they were finishing the work which had been begun. Obviously there must be some considerable village not far away, for many or most of these advancing figures were those of squaws engaged in the butchering work.
“They are in no hurry,” said McMasters after a time. “They are willing to wait. Bows and arrows. They don’t seem to have any guns.”
The Del Sol men looked around them for the horses which they had picketed, broke the front before the carts, where now could be heard women’s lamentations. The boy, Cinquo Centavos, was disclosed sitting with his back against the cart front of his mistress, a Sharpe rifle across his knees. Tears were running down his cheeks—not tears of fear.
“My horses is all gone!” said he, sobbing.
“Hell, the cows is gone, too!” commented Dalhart. “It’s lucky we ain’t!”
McMasters, once banished, had now without election been received back into the ranks of the Del Sol men. Indeed, he was now their leader. Before the stripped trail drovers made any move they held council.
“Yellow Hand knows he don’t have to swap,” said McMasters. “He knows he can choose between dead buffalo and dead cattle. Our horses—they know what we’ve got in that line. They know all they want to know, except what’s in there.” He nodded toward the carts. “They’ll come back to find that out.”
The men all looked at him in silence. He spoke again, to Nabours.
“There’s only one good thing about this whole thing,” he said. “Rudabaugh has not seen these men. They haven’t heard of the killing of those two Comanche women. If they had they’d have rushed us long ago. The women must have been in a visiting village, over toward the Arbuckle hills.”
Nabours was silent for a moment.
“The jig’s up. We’d just as well leave the herd,” said he at length. “We can’t spare men to send after them. It looks like our only hope is to push on ahead with the carts and find a place to fight for what we’ve got left.”
McMasters nodded.
“I think that’s best. They know they’ve got only bows and arrows against our repeating rifles. Horses they like more than anything else. Maybe they’ll be contented with rounding up our remuda if we slip away. Maybe we can come back again and pick up what they leave us. At least, they don’t yet know what we have in there.”
Once more he nodded toward the close-drawn flaps of the carts, to which not a man had yet ventured. They did not want the women to know. “We’d better be on our way before anything worse happens.”
Nabours nodded. The broken cavalcade closed in and soon was moving north once more, now convoying nothing but the shrouded carts, around which they formed a cordon.
Unencumbered with the herd, they made a dozen miles in their hurried march, and finally chose a camping place upon a little eminence crowned with a few straggling trees, which gave them good sight of the surrounding country. They made their camp with the carts inside the circle of guards; hobbled and picketed their remaining saddle horses and put up such barricade as they could. They now had done the last that remained within their power. Nabours told the women to come to the men’s camp. A fire was built, but was kept low.
Taisie Lockhart joined her men, her face exceedingly pale.
“It’s the Comanches!” she broke out at last. “I have brought you into this!”
“Ma’am,” said Nabours at length, “that’s hardly a fair way of speaking. It’s us has brought you. We all throwed in together in this.”
“I told you I was broke and couldn’t pay you,” sobbed the girl, “and you wouldn’t quit. Oh, if you only had!”
She missed one figure in the gathering of rough-clad hard-bitten men. A trifle apart, McMasters paid no attention either to her or any one else. Nabours caught the direction of her glance and nodded.
“We done taken him on the herd, full, now,” said he. “We need men that can shoot. Go on back to sleep.”
But Taisie Lockhart no more slept than did the others. There was no shoulder against which she could lean. The voice of the cricket was no more. In its stead came the raucous roar of the gray wolves scenting blood.
CHAPTER XXVIITHE GAME OF THE GODS
ONCE upon a time the immortal gods, desirous of playing their favorite game, in which mortals are used as pawns, cast down upon the surface of the earth their great chessboard. It was simple, having but four squares. They traced a wandering and wavering line two thousand miles in length along the indefinite line between the tall grass of the prairies and the bunch grass of the plains. It lay somewhere near what men afterwards came to call the one-hundredth meridian.
Across this line at right angles they put down yet another indefinite line to finish off their board. Since they knew nothing of geography or mathematics or politics, they did not call this line the parallel of thirty-six north. For them it was enough that it loosely divided the land of winter snows from that of winter suns. They cared not that at some time it might be the indefinite line between corn and cotton, between lean beef and fat, between breeding and feeding. They knew nothing of quarantine. It was nothing to them that had they gone one degree further north they would have established the south line of a land called by men the state of Kansas. They had never heard of the state of Kansas; or of the Missouri Compromise; or of slavery. They dealt with a great land which then and now has been forever free. Men came to call it the West.
The great east-and-west line, like the great north-and-south line, one day was to be broken down and forgotten, after the immortal gods had kept their chessboard sufficiently long to themselves and had wearied of their game. They left the chessboard to their pawns and sat back, idly watching them, smiling that the pawns knew so little of great games.
When the early herds pushed up into that unknown land from the straggling half-Spanish settlements of the Southwest men ignorantly walked over wealth which they then did not heed and did not need—the wealth that lay under the tall grasses and the short grasses. Of the bunch grass, the vine mesquite grass, and the redtop and the Eastern bluestem, they could talk understandingly. They lived in a day and land as yet pastoral. But their cattle walked over unsuspected millions of millions of gallons of oil that one day later would be needed. The rude white bandits of the nation, men even of Rudabaugh’s shrewd type, themselves did not suspect the measureless measures of coal and other minerals that lay under their feet. The immortal gods smiled at them, knowing that in time they would give their pawns everything they needed, equal to their changed requirements, as age succeeded age.
Now, pawns on the great chessboard of the gods where not even pawns ever had been placed before, the ragged crew of Del Sol was pushing up, two degrees eastward of the north-and-south dividing line. They had been traveling somewhere near the ninety-eighth meridian, of which not one of them ever had heard. Not many of them ever had heard of thirty-six-thirty, or of the Missouri Compromise. They fought a war without much history, for the rank and file, as always is the case, had but narrow horizons. They were simply cowmen; and now they were driving north. To them Abilene, their objective, was as vague a thing as had been the cities of Cibola to Coronado’s men when they also once crossed the great chessboard of the immortal gods, caring not even for the grasses, so good for buffalo and cows, and also missing all the minerals that lay beneath their feet, although it was one mineral they sought.
That was in the past. The immortal gods had decided that now it was time for men to move north. There was to be a great new constructive day.
But it seems that there is implanted in Nature and in the universe the law of two opposing forces; centrifugal and centripetal; good and evil; constructive and destructive; that which feeds and is preyed upon by that which fattens; that which produces and creates, countered by that which destroys and tears down; that which sows to reap, and that which reaps where it has not sown. Therefore it was quite as much foreordained that Rudabaugh and his men should pass north to prey on the Del Sol herd as that the Del Sol herdsmen should be driving north into a new day.
Be all these things assigned such causes as they may in each man’s philosophy, at the end of his nose or farther, a new epoch was at hand for the vast unsettled West. Rudabaugh and his men had discussed that daily and nightly as they pushed on up the Washita River of the Indian Nations. They finally camped at the ford of the Washita, well in advance of the Del Sol men and directly north of them, although neither knew the proximity of the other.
The ruffian leader had no more than twenty men in his band. He had recruited these from classes naturally unscrupulous and restless under any law. But all criminal tendency is in its way a sort of individual initiative, self-assertiveness, after all; so that Rudabaugh found his men not always wholly submissive to any man’s will. They were less so now than ever. Repeatedly Rudabaugh had to explain to them again and over again that they were after large game, that the division would be large per capita. They were more like Coronado’s men—wanted mineral in hand; minted mineral.
“Well, I don’t mind saying,” remarked one of the bolder of his men at the second night of encampment at the Washita crossing—a city lies near there to-day—“I’ll be free to say that I don’t noways like the look of things.”
Rudabaugh turned to him savagely.
“Why don’t you? What’s the matter with you, Baldy?”
“There wasn’t no cause to kill them Indian women. If we don’t keep moving, them Comanches may run into us any time.”
“Where’d we move?” sneered Rudabaugh. “What are we after up here? Have I got to make a picture-block map to show you? Don’t you see, you damned numskull, if that herd gets to the railroad the whole jig is up for us? We’ve got to make our clean-up right now, this season or not at all, I keep telling you. We’ve got to get our scrip and get our lands, and get our surveyors out to locate them; and we’ve got to do it all now. Next year will be too late if that herd gets through. I’ve told you all this a dozen times. Now if you don’t like my way of leading, you know what you can do. If I hear any more grumbling I know what I’ll do.”
None the less this spreading doubt and dissatisfaction on the part of his followers did begin to make impression upon even so hardened a soul as Rudabaugh’s. He could do nothing if left alone. Looters always organize. In spite of his bravado, in spite of the quantities of fiery liquor which he had consumed, he began to feel a sudden uncontrollable chill creeping over his heart. Just now he began to pace up and down, restlessly endeavoring to work himself into one of his berserk rages. But he looked over his shoulder once in a while. No one knew what he saw, unless they themselves also saw the picture of the two naked women lying in their blood at a bathing pool.
“Damn it!” said Rudabaugh now, petulantly. “I don’t see why that bunch of buzzards should pick a tree so close to light on!”
He caught up his rifle. A great black bird dropped dead from a limb a hundred yards away. The others rose clumsily, wheeled in dark caravan; but they alighted on another tree not even so far away.
“That ain’t luck, I tell you,” repeated the first speaker of Rudabaugh’s men. “Me, I don’t like the look of things.”
CHAPTER XXVIIIA COLONEL OF CAVALRY
JIM NABOURS, who had known but little sleep, kicked out of his blankets before sunup and stood, grimy, haggard and moody, his hands in pockets, his hat pushed back on his head. There was no familiar sight of a great sea of longhorns rising just above the level of the grasses. The Del Sol herd was gone.
All the men finished their sodden breakfast in silence. Only the hysterical sobbings of the black woman Milly made any variation from the general taciturnity. There came no word from the tight-closed tilt flaps of thecarreta. Del Williams and Dalhart had not spoken to each other since the crossing of the Red. McMasters paid scarce more attention to any than if they had not been there.
The sun rose red above the wet grass, climbed steadily till it seemed smaller; but it did not look down upon any mass of longhorns rising from the bedding ground. There was no long procession heading out for the north. The men of Del Sol were without an occupation.
Moody and unhappy, they sat in their bivouac, waiting. It was McMasters who spoke, suddenly pointing to the south.
“Look, Jim,” said he, as he came in and touched Nabours on the shoulder. “That’s not Indians—that’s cavalry!”
In five minutes proof was complete. There came into view, company front, at a stiff trot, guidon fluttering bravely, two troops of the hard-bitten United States cavalry, then stationed variously on the Plains. An officer rode in advance. As he came closer there showed near him the headdress of an Indian warrior, whether guide, scout or captive, none could say.
In the sudden relief from their long strain, and under the influence of this spectacle of riding men, always inspiriting, the men of Del Sol rose and gave a ragged shout of welcome to the Yellow Legs. The leader rode straight on in without any salute or reply; a grim, grizzled man of forty years or more, in the Western uniform of our Army when it was at its best. He dismounted stiffly, came up with military stiffness, stood on one leg stiffly, looking for the leader. He kept with him his Indian companion. The Del Sol men now saw that it was the Comanche chieftain, Yellow Hand, the partisan of yesterday’s affair.
“Good morning, men,” said the cavalry leader. “I am Colonel Griswold, from the Sill cantonment down below. What’re you doing here in the Nations?”
“Good morning,” said Jim Nabours, stepping forward. “We are shore glad to see you colonel. Well, we ain’t doing a hell of a lot of anything right now. Yesterday we was a-driving thirty-six hundred and fifty-nine fours and mixed stuff north to Alberlene. That was afore we met yore friend there. We was just a-strolling through.”
“Well, this old thief was just a-strolling through. I was following him. Last night I saw they had some fresh beef hides as well as buffalo in their camp. One thing led to another. I took your trail.
“They rather busted up your herd, eh? Well, I brought Yellow Hand along on the chance that he might be useful.
“Where do you men come from?” he continued. “Don’t you know that driving cattle across the Indian Nations is the foolishest thing in the world?”
“It looks thataway now, colonel,” assented Jim Nabours. “We come from Caldwell County, Texas, five hunderd miles south of here.”
“You’re not trading with the tribes in any way?”
“No, sir, we don’t want no truck with them.”
“Got no whisky along?”
“Good God, no!” replied Nabours soulfully. “I wisht we had.”
“H’m,” said the army officer, looking toward the fire. “You got any coffee left?”
“Some. Set in,” said the foreman simply.
So invited, Sandy Griswold, seasoned colonel of cavalrymen, made himself at home, a tin of coffee in his hand. His eye took in the arrangement of the scant equipment of these cattle drovers. He noted the giant carts, their covers drawn tight. He noted also when the flaps of the nearest cart cover parted, and some one—at first he thought it was a young man—began to climb down from the lofty seat via the cart tongue.
“Hello, what’s that?” said Sandy Griswold suddenly. “That’s no man—that’s a woman!”
“Shore she is,” said Jim Nabours. “She owns the cows. She’s going through to Aberlene.”
By now Taisie Lockart, in blue shirt and checkered trousers, boots and wide hat—her only apparel—was approaching the men. The officer arose, hat in hand. Jim Nabours made such clumsy introduction as he could. The soldier’s eyes were running over the trim, straight, round figure of this astonishing apparition. He saw the great club of bound bright hair, the easy lines of young womanhood; the poise and grace of as fine a specimen of young womanhood, indeed, as any land might well produce. He knew at the first glance that here was a young lady. She was with this party but not of it. Her first words affirmed his first conviction.
“But why are you here?” he repeated in wonderment. “You don’t belong here. This is a man’s job. Didn’t you know the risk you’d run?”
“None of us knew very much about it, sir,” rejoined Taisie Lockhart. “We are beginning now to see.”
She spread out her hands, indicating the absence of her herd.
“Sit down here by me, please, young lady.” Hat in hand, he made a place for her. “Which one of these men did you say was your husband?”
The bright blood flooded Taisie’s cheeks. Her trail boss answered for her.
“She won’t be married none till we get to Aberlene,” said Jim explicitly. “But that ain’t nobody’s fault but her own.”
Sandy Griswold laughed uproariously.
“By jove!” said he. “It’s an awful thing to be old and lame and married—married before you were a day old, my dear. If I wasn’t, I swear I’d marry you now, before you’re a day older! What’s the matter with all these young fellers?”
His keen blue eye under its shaggy brows swept the company of the Del Sol men, but found no mate for her. His eye lingered for just a time on a tall young man who stood quite apart.
“Come now,” he resumed, turning to the girl from whose fresh beauty—which was beauty even in daylight, and even in the morning—his eyes did not willingly wander long, “tell me all about things. You don’t belong in here, but of course I have got to help you out. I wouldn’t fret too much. If I had not come along old Yellow Hand here would have put you on your uppers. As it is, we’ll put him on his. We’ll all go back down the trail together with my bullies yonder. We’ll hold a big rodeo down there and see what the buffalo and the Comanches have left for you. Very foolish of you, my dear; very foolish, indeed. But we’ll see what can be done.”
“How could we ever pay you?” said Taisie Lockhart, turning upon him fully now the gaze of her disconcerting eyes.
“You’ve more than paid me now, my dear girl,” said the old warrior. “Lockhart, you said your name was? What was your father’s name?”
“His name was Burleson Lockhart, sir. He was colonel of the Ninth Volunteers in the war. We came from Alabama, once. But my father did not believe in the secession, though he fought with Texas.”
“Why, I knew him! His regiment and mine were opposed, in Tennessee!” His voice dropped. “But the men said you were an orphan. Your father did not get back from the war?”
Sudden memory caused her to drop her face in her hands. Once more her foreman spoke for her.
“Her pap was killed on the Missouri border, after the war, by the Federal bushwackers up there. He was driving cows up thataway. Them Yankee people in Austin have done robbed this girl of everything she had. We was driving these cows to see if we couldn’t make a little stake for her oncet more.”
Sandy Griswold sat silent for a time. At last he spoke quietly to the tall girl who sat on a bed roll beside him.
“Well, now!” he said. “Well now, we’ll see what can be done. You don’t belong here, but I’d be no sort of a soldier if I didn’t see you through.”
Now, as though by providential plan, had arrived unity of purpose and cheerfulness of spirit, an hour earlier unpredictable. Colonel Sandy Griswold was no man to delay action. In a half hour the camp was broken, and the entire party, preceded by the troopers, was retracing the way south to the scene of yesterday’s disaster. The commanding officer rode by Taisie Lockhart’s cart. The ferret eyes of the sullen Comanche saw now what had been hidden in thecarreta. Between the cavalry commander and these wild savages there existed a distinct understanding of some sort, resting on fear of the troopers’ carbines.
“I’m going to put the whole band to work for you,” said Griswold, and called his interpreter.
The Del Sol men found themselves before long enriched by the recruitment of a couple of dozen laughing young Indian braves—all of them unarmed—who for the mere excitement of the thing were ready to assist in the rounding up of the scattered cattle and horses. A strangely mixed round-up band they made, half of them grim and silent, the other half wildly whooping, when they started off down the trail which lay written on the grassy soil.
As all of them knew, a buffalo stampede was the worst possible run on the range. But fortune partially favored the harassed drovers. It soon was evident that the buffalo had avoided the fringe of timber which lay ahead, had kept on running into the wind, as was their custom—alone of all cud chewing game. The domestic cattle had plunged into the thickets and split up in the edge of shallow timbered draws, and the wind meant less to them. This partially combed out the cattle from the buffalo. Inside of three miles the riders began to pick up groups and strings of the cattle in the long dragnet which they swept through one cover after another.
“By golly!” exclaimed Jim Nabours suddenly, after they had ridden an hour or two. “I’ll bet a thousand dollars there’s old Alamo! If he’s there, there’ll be more!”
It was true. A gaunt yellow head crowned with wide horns stared at them over the thicket tops. Old Alamo, self-appointed leader of the herd, had concluded he had gone far enough—indeed, he was willing to fight to establish that fact now. But the sweep of the riders driving in the groups of cattle induced him to change his mind.
There never were better riders than the Comanches, and they were hunters as well. The round-up was sport for them. The wild band helped the trail boss to pick up one string after another of the scattered herd, horses mingled with them. One body after another of the gathering Nabours turned back to the old encampment where the run had begun. Especially, he set the Indians to rounding up the horse band, a task in which they took the most extreme delight. The joined forces combed out the entire country to the southeast for perhaps more than ten or fifteen miles by evening. All day long, under this or that party of riders, the stream of reclaimed cattle and horses continued, until even Jim Nabours ceased to grumble at the product of the day.
That night and yet another night Griswold held his camp, which included that of the drovers, some two miles apart from the Comanche village; but his subalterns day and night had out troops who held the Comanches under control. There was no outbreak. The fearless Comanches, feasting full, laughed and chattered like children. When Nabours reported to Griswold that he was content to end the rodeo, the tally showed that the Del Sol herd, cut down as it had been by the unprecedented losses, still numbered three thousand and ninety-six head of cattle; and sixty good riding horses remained in the remuda. They were pioneers. The term “per cent of loss” was then unknown on the trail. Later, such losses would have meant ruin.
“What cows is left,” said Nabours, “I’ll leave for to stock the Chickasaw range. As for the lost horses, I reckon these here Comanches will take care of that after we are gone. To-morrow I’d like to start on north. We ain’t got anything too much to eat but beef, and we mustn’t waste no time.”
“All right,” said Griswold. “We’ll all pull north together in the morning. My supply wagons are up and I’ll trade you flour and bacon and dried apples for fresh beef. I’m tired of buffalo. I’ll see you, anyhow, as far as the Washita crossing.
“I’m going to take Yellow Hand along with me,” he added. “All these Comanches have got plenty of meat now, and they’ll stand hitched until he comes back. I have told them that if they start any funny business I’m going to shoot Yellow Hand in front of the whole village.
“Send that man over to my tent,” he said to Nabours. He pointed to McMasters, whose work he had seen. “I want to talk to him, since I know who he is. If he is a Texas sheriff and a captain of Texas Rangers he and I have got to have a little conversation about Comanches.”
They two sat late that night in front of Griswold’s tent, talking by the little fire. When they parted the soldier gave the young Ranger a strong clasp of the hand. What they had said no one but themselves knew.
And now, when the pink dawn of the prairie again came above the dewy grasses, there might be seen once more the sea of wide horns, in the old comfortable morning picture of the trail; the trail of days now gone by forever.
CHAPTER XXIXA MAID’S MISTAKE
DIMINISHED but undaunted, the great herd swept north once more into the wide, sweet, unknown world. The mingled grasslands and narrow timber tracts which lay between the heads of the water courses made for cattle drovers a land of plenty where man had not yet come. In every hollow the wild deer sprang away, the head of every draw contained its flocks of great wild turkeys. On the grassy flats were uncounted coveys of the prairie grouse. The air was enlivened with the wild calls of the giant sickle-billed curfew; and from above came the mysterious, baffling liquid tremolo of the upland plover, honey sweet to hear. Glossy green parakeets showed in the timber mottes, meadow larks made gay the air with their metallic clankings, mixed with the broken strains of melody all their own. There was life, motion, all the time in the wild landscape.
The vegetable world also was rich, richer than our Government had thought when in ignorance it gave this domain to the savages in a treaty which, like all our treaties, later was to be repealed. Fruits began to appear, few of them yet ripening; wild grapes, plums. They crossed one strip of sand dunes which ran through the grassy knolls, and found an astonishing growth of dwarfed grapevines, showing not more than a foot or so above the sand, but promising fruit of great size.
In the timbered valleys there was an admirable growth of elms, cottonwoods, black walnuts. Haws and persimmons, not yet ripe, young acorns of the oak trees, showed what the fall mast would be. The black bears and the deer even now were hunting mushrooms. Abundance of food was there for every species. The spotted wildcat made no unusual sight. Now and then a panther passed ghostlike from one covert to the next. A rich land and a contented, indolent, assured. The white men had not yet come. Nor was there even here either weed or bee.
Though really near the eastern edge of their range of that day, distant bands of the buffalo still showed; and adding yet keener zest to an enlivened landscape, frequent bands of wild horses passed in their easy drifting over the grasslands, or stood at gaze in superb confidence in their own speed. It was the open country, the free country, of the old West. In it these men were as much adventurers as had been the sailors of Columbus or Cabot, Leif Ericson or Magellan. It had taken three Army expeditions and a half century of time to find the head of the Red River, which made the drovers’ Rubicon. Young in the youth of their world, they exulted as they rode.
Colonel Sandy Griswold quit the saddle for the jolting cart seat to which Nabours had banished Taisie Lockhart. The wilderness makes swift friendships.
“My dear,” said the soldier to the girl one day as they rode, joltingly along. “I wouldn’t ask anything better than just to ride along this way with you forever. You are by no means painful to the naked eye, and within sixty days you will be rich. Abilene is not a dream, although it is just beginning. Two railroads are going west across the lower Plains now. They are going to make a cattle market at Abilene and you are in on the ground floor. Rich? Are you going to support a husband? You could, you know.”
“I think I’ll buy myself some clothes the first thing I’ll do,” said Taisie, slowly smiling, “if there is such a thing as women’s clothes at Abilene.”
“There you go! Woman’s first instinct. Tell me”—suddenly—“where is that tall young man—you know which one I mean. You don’t know where he is?”
“I think he’s back behind to-day. He’s not regularly on the herd—now.”
“You don’t know very much, do you, my dear? You’d let a brave, square man ride on the drag?”
“Please don’t, I beg of you! I don’t really know why you mention him. My men all are splendid.”
But he went on relentlessly.
“Yes; and I suppose you know that your men are riding his horses—that you are eating his food yourself? Did you know that he staked you for this drive—that he is going to make your fortune for you? No, you never knew that. But that’s true.”
“Oh, don’t tell me such things!” broke out Taisie in swift consternation. “I never knew that! Of course I never knew it! I’d never have gone a foot! Oh, this is an awful thing!”
“Yes, my dear; there are awful things that a woman can do to a man, too. Now that it is too late it would be quite like a woman for you to love him. You ought to have trusted him in the first place. You can’t fool with a man like that. He’s cold iron.”
“He didn’t—he wouldn’t—don’t you think—do you suppose—why, what can I do? I’ve been unjust. Yes, I know that now!”
“Well, I wouldn’t climb down out of this cart right now anyhow,” said Colonel Griswold calmly.
“But I can’t go on this way. What shall I do? Rich? No, I’m a pauper! And I’ve not a soul in all the world to go to.”
“Oh, yes, you have, my dear! Observe me beat on my chest. I, Sandy Griswold, will save this maiden in distress! But it’s always best to get the truth, the first thing. Well, you’ve got it now. You never would have learned it unless I had told you. That young man would rather cut his throat than tell you what I have told you. He never dreamed I would. But I thought it right.”
“But I can’t go on this way!”
“You have got to go on in this way, my dear. There is nothing else for you to do. When that man says he is through he is through. He’s got the chief ingredients of a bad man. But there never was a bad man who didn’t have good things about him. That sort of a man can’t alter a decision. He thinks once, acts once, is done once and for all, and when he’s done he’s done. I can’t help you with him. But what a splendid pair of human beings you have spoiled!”
“A fine prospect you give me, sir! Oh, you are comforting!” said Taisie Lockhart bitterly.
“It will be very hard for a girl like you not to marry some man. It is a very terrible thing to marry the wrong man, my dear. It’s a very terrible thing to let a man think you meant to marry him when you didn’t. It’s the worst when a man wants to marry and can’t—because he can’t forgive an insult to his honor. It is lucky you are not a man.”
“Ah, less lucky that I am woman! I shall choke at the thought of eating his bread!”
“Oh, no, you won’t. That’s melodrama, my dear. If you don’t like his flour eat some of mine.
“No, keep your eyes closed and your mouth closed, too, until you get to Abilene. I may meet you or send for you up there myself. That’s what the Army’s for—we’re organized to help damsels in distress. That you are in distress I know very well indeed. While there’s a sack of flour or an ambulance mule left—well, we’ll see.”
At the encampment of the last night below the Washita, Taisie Lockhart might well have felt a sense of security. There were two troops of cavalry and all her own men bivouacked about her. But she could not sleep.
Soon after dark that night Dan McMasters, asking no consent and giving no notification, quietly rose and caught up his night horse. He disappeared in the darkness headed toward the ford. He said no word of good-by to any one, and was not missed by any one—save by one unhappy girl who had lacked his coming all these days. She was sure she hated him—when she reasoned. When she did not reason she felt her veins run hot with love of him. He had kissed her. Their arms had encircled one another. Ah, obligations?