CHAPTER XXXIIITHIRTY-SIX
ONE delay after another, one disaster with another, the Del Sol adventurers now were far into their second month on the trail. The summer was approaching, although they had as yet made scarce more than three-fourths of their entire distance to the railroad. Day after day they advanced over a wholly unsettled country that lay for nearly its entire length between the more settled civilized tribes on the east and the buffalo range toward the west. Clinging in their wavering line fairly close to the ninety-eighth meridian, without a guide, watch, calendar or compass, they now had reached a region beautiful as a wilderness, but soon to be the seat of a later and undreamed civilization.
They had been in wilderness practically all the way. At that time Austin was little more than a straggling country town. The herd cast dust into the one street of Fort Worth, then boasting not over one hundred inhabitants; and that was the last of the upper Texas towns. But what a line of cities was to follow their path on ninety-eight!
In the Indian Nations they had crossed the Washita, where now stands the thriving town of Chickasha, Oklahoma. El Reno, of Oklahoma, was grassland then, near the ford of the North Fork of the Canadian. Kingfisher was not dreamed of on the trail from the North Fork to the Cimarron; and beyond that the city of Enid was to wait until long after cattle days were gone and the cattle trail had moved itself much farther to the west. Above them they aimed for Caldwell, just across the Kansas line then but a ragged frontier town. Thence the wagon tongue pointed toward Wichita, when Wichita was hardly more than a furrow in the ground, “a mile long and an inch wide.” A railroad was still unforeseen in any of these vicinities in 1867; but railroads soon were to follow, almost in the footsteps of the earliest herd to Abilene. So much, to make understandable the exultation of these men as they discovered for themselves a country, or a succession of countries, absolutely virgin so far as the white man was concerned; a pastoral empire that never has had a parallel.
Whether by accident or design, the location of their northbound path was a lucky or a shrewd one. Scarcely anywhere else would there have been so few Indians to disturb them, nor could their experience easily be repeated. The depredations of the tribesmen, their begging of the drovers, their demands of tribute of all the northbound herds were still in the future, since as yet the Indians had not learned of the northern passing of the white men which was to come in a great wave in the ensuing years; and since not many tribes knew this herd was passing. The Del Sol men were pioneers.
How rich, how wildly alluring, this unsullied world which now was all their own to enjoy! Their wild cattle now advanced quite usually in sight of an almost continuous spectacle of wild buffalo, wild horses, wild deer. At times the herd had to be held while a body of buffalo was parted by rifle fire to let them through. There seemed no end to the animal life of the region into which they came. It was all so different from Texas now that they felt themselves strangers in a foreign land.
Their next river was the Cimarron, one more stream heading down from the high, dry buffalo plains of the Panhandle to the sandy reaches and the flat loam lands to the eastward. Making down out of the strip of scrubby timber which they encountered below their crossing, the herdsmen made short work of the Cimarron, which was at so low a stage that the carts were driven through and the cattle did not have to swim at all.
Their start had been approximately at the thirtieth degree of latitude. They had now reached, just above the Cimarron crossing, the parallel of thirty-six, which later represented, as well as any arbitrary delineation, the vague dividing line between the southern and the northern ranges.
Above them now by one degree of latitude lay the south line of Kansas; between, the narrow unsettled and unorganized east-and-west tract so long known as the Cherokee Strip or the Cherokee Outlet. The existence of this strip of land was proof that the greatest range of the buffalo lay yet farther to the west, in the short-grass land; for forty years before this time the Cherokees had fought the Osages to secure an outlet over their land to the buffalo range beyond. But of all these things also the Del Sol men were ignorant or careless. They did not know where they were.
Roll along, little dogies, roll along! You broke one of the greatest paths in all the world! You carried the South into the North! It was you who ended the war!
“Roll along, little dogies, roll along!”
The lazy song of half-somnolent riders, ragged, lean, brown, rose on the afternoon air of one more sunny day after sunny day. By this time the herd had but one more considerable stream, the Salt Fork of the Arkansas, between it and the main stream of the Arkansas. The men now all were studying geography as best they might, for gradually they all had concluded that Texas was far behind them, and that they were in a world they knew not.
“She’s shore a perty country, Miss Taisie,” said Jim Nabours when they paused for their noonday rest, the first stop north of the Cimarron. “It looks to me like folks could almost live here, some day, though I don’t see no cows nowheres.”
He could not dream that within a few short years there would be cattle under fence in all that country; that long before that time abundant strays would run wild as wild horses; that even then stretched illimitedly the great upper range, wholly undiscovered, soon to be clamoring for cows, to carry on a business which was then an unsuspected thing.
“Come along here, Miss Taisie,” he continued, inviting her to take a seat beside him on the grass and spreading down a crumpled sheet of brown paper. It held what cannot be bought to-day for any money—a more or less precise map of the first old cow trail from Texas north, although only his rude amateur hand had drawn it. The clumsy finger of the trail boss pointed out to his employer their locality as near as he himself could guess it.
“Dan McMasters and me talked this over afore he quit us,” he explained. “I’ve drawed it the best I could, and it’s sort of helpful too. Near as I can figure it, we’re just about to cross thirty-six north. My pap told me that thirty-six-thirty was where slavery ended and the damn Yankees begun.”
“Yes; the Missouri Compromise,” nodded Taisie.
“Anyways my pap told me that thirty-six, along in there, was about where cotton wouldn’t grow so well nohow, and where the ticks probably would fall offen the cows in the wintertime. The line must come right about here.”
“What line?” demanded Len Hersey, who was listening in and who now bent over the rude map curiously. “I kep’ a clost look all the time we’ve been on the trail, an’ so fur from seein’ any thirty-six lines atween here and where we all started, I ain’t seen nary line a-tall.”
“They ain’t marked on the ground, man,” replied his leader gently; “it’s only on the paper. But what can I expect of a boy raised on squirrel and corn pone, like you was? Yes, sir; thirty-six is just in and around right here.”
He made on this soiled paper a little cross, using a gnawed stub of a pencil which in its time had tallied perhaps a hundred thousand cows.
“There ain’t no moss on the trees no more,” mused Len. “The grass ain’t the same here. My law! did you ever see so many greenhead flies in your borned days as we’ve had all the way from the Red River north? And as for mosquitoes, Miss Lockhart,” he added, “a feller don’t darst get his arms out of his blankets at night.”
He looked ruefully at his elbows, entirely visible through the sleeves of his only shirt.
“Like enough a man could make some corn up here,” mused Jim Nabours, sagely, looking around him over the rolling prairie. “He couldn’t raise no cows; it’d be too cold. No, nor of course he couldn’t raise no cotton. Well it’s a right purty country; but can’t never be settled, even if the Osages was gone.”
“I wonder how big a place is Aberlene, anyhow,” queried the ragged cowhand. “Me, I never seen a railroad. Down at Fort Worth several men been saying there’d be a railroad there some time. That’s all foolishness.”
“Shore it is,” said Nabours. “Well, we got no railroad here neither. Let’s move along.”
They were now, although they were not aware of it, to pass up the course of Turkey Creek towards the Salt Fork for two days’ march above the Cimarron. When they came to the heads of that stream and of Mulberry Creek, which ran thence southeast—also a stream unknown to any map at that time—they reached a pleasant rolling plain where it seemed as though the entire country was alive with moving game. It was a spectacle which awakened even their blasé souls, used to wild game all their lives.
Northward appeared a vast herd of buffalo, usually a most welcome sight to the plains traveler, but one always dreaded by the drover, who sometimes had to start a road through them at cost of much ammunition. Antelope, wild horses, all the great game of the unfrequented plains were visible also. But all this game was on the move and not feeding peacefully, as naturally it should be. Why was this?
Nabours came back as soon as he sensed the nature of what lay ahead.
“Throw ’em off, boys!” he called hurriedly. “Hold ’em in here and don’t go a foot further, or we’ll lose every hoof we’ve got. That country’s full of buffalo and everything else, and something has set them going.”
Leaving his best men to keep the cattle under control, he took with him two or three men and rode rapidly on ahead. They pulled up at a little eminence.
“Great Snakes!” said one of the men. “Just look there!”
The entire country was dotted with scattered black masses of moving buffalo. The numbers seemed endless, uncountable. Something had pushed them east of the more abundant short-grass range far to the westward.
“We’ll have to break that up or we’ll never get through,” said Nabours. “Yet I was thinking this country up here wouldn’t feed cows! Just look at the game!”
They could see also band after band of wild horses, magnificent animals with high heads and heavy manes and tails; creatures that never failed to awaken keen enthusiasm among even the most experienced plainsman. Now, also, they were in an elk country, and herds of these creatures trotted off, following the same general drift to the east and south. There was such an immeasurably vast blending of wild life as not any one of these men ever expected to see again.
“Look! Look, men!” called Nabours, who was studying the sight eagerly. “If that ain’t cows I’m a liar!”
He was entirely right. Caught in the general drift, there were two or three score of domestic cattle, of no man might tell what origin; no doubt outcasts or strays of some Osage Indian settlement to the east. The sight of these especially caused the blood of the range men to leap.
“Don’t tell me this ain’t a good country!” exclaimed Nabours. “Them’s cows!”
“They’ve got right funny horns,” said Lem Hersey critically; and forsooth these cattle, descendants of some Eastern stock, even then lacked the wide horns of the old Texan breed.
“I ain’t particular about their horns,” remarked Nabours. “They got hide enough to hold the Fishhook brand, and they look like strays to me. Any of ’em comes around here too clost I ain’t going to let his horns stand in the way. We need some more strays.
“But ef once our herd gets in there they’ll be strays too. We’ve got to hold ’em back, boys, and wait till this thing gets by. This is a general movement of the range stuff, plumb out of the country, and if our cows begin to drift with this it’ll be worse than anything we’ve run into yet.”
“Hark!” A man threw up his hand. “What’s that? Shooting on ahead?”
They sat their horses, uncertain. The sound of rifle fire in their experience was usually a signal of danger.
“Wait! Wait, men!” Nabours in turn raised a hand.
The sound of rifle fire was unmistakable. The heavy reports were borne by the prairie winds across what might be a mile of open space. The detonations were spaced almost mathematically alike.
“That’s not Injuns!” exclaimed Jim Nabours. “That’s a white man! He’s got a stand on a bunch of buffalo: I’ll bet a horse that’s what it is.”
CHAPTER XXXIVTHE TRAIL MAKER
THE reports came steadily—ten, fifteen, twenty. It was easy for the trail men to locate the rifleman. They advanced rapidly in his direction. As they topped a little ridge there lay before them the last scene of one of countless similar tragedies of the Plains then going on all over the country a thousand by fifteen hundred miles in extent.
Within the circle of a shallow swale stood a huddled group of black figures of buffalo still on their feet. Among them, around them, over a space no larger than a half acre, lay motionless or struggling two score other dark figures—the bodies of the fallen.
The drovers saw the rifle smoke, two hundred yards from the game. The killer lay concealed back of a wisp of grass which topped a near-by ridge. He lay flat, his heavy rifle supported by two cross sticks, his wiping rod and another hickory wand held together by the fingers of his left hand as a rest for the barrel. His hat was off. His hair tossed, blending with the waving grasses. He never had shown himself at all. Mercilessly, carefully, he placed one shot after another. At each shot a dust spot spurted out on a dark hide. An animal staggered, made a little run; but, shot through the lungs, soon lay down. The survivors smelled at it, made short rushes, returned, stood confused. Each time one of the victims headed out, it fell before the white puff of smoke which came from the hidden death engine.
The killer had the range perfectly. He paid no attention to the result of any shot, for he knew that it was fatal. Each heavy bullet tore through the lungs of a buffalo. It would not go far. The ground was black with them already. Some day the bone pickers would rejoice, for here they would find fifty skeletons packed close together.
It was the “stand” of the professional or the expert buffalo hunter. The skin hunters were even then pushing out into the Plains on their unholy calling.
But the skin hunter did not belong to the Indian lands, and no Indian hunted buffalo in this way. The Del Sol men therefore were not sure as to the identity of this man. They rode off to investigate, not showing themselves at first. But at length they did sharpen on the sky line. The staggered remnant of the befuddled animals caught their scent in the air and at last nerved themselves for a saving rush away from this slaughter hole.
When he saw the intruders the rifleman himself drew back to safety. After a short mutual reconnaissance he rose and held up his hand in the sign of peace. The Del Sol men approached in like fashion.
The marksman might now be seen to be a man of anywhere from forty to sixty years of age, wrinkled of face, crowned with stubbly hair. His dark, thick skin showed him to be of mixed blood. His garb was that of the white man, save that he wore no hat. He leaned on his deadly rifle with unconcern and in silence as the trail men approached.
“How, friend!” saluted Nabours.
“How do you do?” replied the other in fair English. “Which way you go?”
“North. We’ve got a herd of cows, three thousand head, five miles south of here.”
“Three thousand head! Ha! You go Ab’lene—Caldwell—Wich’ta?”
“Yes, if we can ever get through here. I was wondering what had drifted the buffalo.”
“I kill ’em few for hides,” grinned the half-breed. “My man come pretty soon for skin. My camp over, there, maybe so two mile. Where you come from?”
“Caldwell County,” answered Nabours. “Our brand is T. L. You’re headed south? Are you buffalo hunting?”
“No, got wagon train—Army supplies. Take ’em south from railroad across Nations, for Caddoes, Wichitas, Wacos. I just laying out road for wagons. Army forts got to have supplies.”
“Well, the country needs a road all right,” commented Nabours. “We started to find what they call the Chisholm Trail. There ain’t no such a thing.”
“No?” The oldish face wrinkled into a smile. “No find ’em trail? Too bad! You don’t know me,” he added after a time.
“No, we don’t know nobody.”
“I’m Jesse Chisholm. My ranch is in Nations, south long way. I bring plenty horses up from Texas. I know your people. I been all across Texas from Palo Pinto to Double Mountain Fork, Buffalo Gap, Estacado; all the time I make trails.”
“And you have left one behind you now?”
“Sure! She’s easy from here to Caldwell. I got fifty wagon, plenty horse, plenty mule; make ford, sometime make bridge, sometime make raft. I got some wagons for Colonel Griswold. He’s going to make big reservation for Kiowas and Comanches. Fort Sill, he’ll call ’em.”
“So you’re Jesse Chisholm?” remarked Jim Nabours after a time. “I didn’t know for sure there was no such person. Tell me, is there such a place as Aberlene?”
“Sure! I trail up Arkansas River from east, pass Wichita. I hear Ab-lene up north. Sure!”
“All the Injuns know Jesse Chisholm,” he continued. “Osage, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw—I trade ’em horse all through there. I know Shawnee Trail, through Choctaws.”
“Then tell us, friend, since you know this country pretty well, how far is it out of the Nations from here?”
“Maybe so fifty-six mile. Caldwell, he’s on line above Osages. Always grass. So you go Ab’lene?”
Nabours nodded.
“We don’t know where it is.”
“You come my camp with me. I got a man in my camp, he come from Ab’lene. He come down here to find you people.”
“Find us? He never heard of us!”
“I dunno. He say he come south till he meets cows. He show you Ab’lene all right.”
“Len, ride back to the men and tell them to hold the herd till I come,” said Nabours, turning. “I may be late. I’ll go over and see what there is in all this.”
Without further speech, the famous half-breed trail maker led them back for a quarter of a mile or so to where he had picketed his horse. Soon they passed another uncommunicative half-breed, driving a wagon team. A few words between him and Chisholm, and the driver passed on to begin his share of the work—skinning the dead buffalo, for their hides alone.
In time they found the wagon encampment, its band of horses and mules hobbled or picketed near by; a pleasant though extraordinary sight in these surroundings. Chisholm led the way to a point a few yards distant from the main camp.
Lying on his saddle blankets under the shade of a scrubby bush, there was a white man—a bearded man of middle age, with clothing not much worn and of distinctly Northern cut. Caught by a severe attack of fever and ague, he now was in a raging fever. But at the sight of these newcomers—who presentiment told him were the very men he sought—he sprang to his feet and held out his hand.
“I knew you’d come!” said he. “I know you are drovers! Where is your herd? I told them I’d find a herd coming up to Abilene this spring. McCoyne’s my name.”
“Well,” said the trail boss, “they call me Jim Nabours. We’re people from Caldwell County, Texas—thousand miles south of here for all I know, or anyway six hundred. We’re in the T. L.; Fishhook road brand. We was headed for Aberlene.”
“That’s my town,” said the stranger. “And I’ll tell you, friend, she is a town! We’ve got the railroad, and I’ve got the stockyards, built and waiting. Don’t let no one talk to you about Baxter Springs; don’t you think of stopping at Caldwell or Wichita. Abilene is the only town in Kansas with a railroad and a stockyards and a real market. There’s buyers five deep a-waiting for you up there. How many cattle you got?”
“Say three thousand.”
“Great Scott! Abilene’s made! You’re made too!”
“How much did you pay for cows when you started north?” he asked. Nabours was looking at his eyes.
“You ain’t so sick!” said he. “Well, we didn’t pay nothing for ours. We raised them by hand from calves. How much can a man get for fine fours in your neighborhood?”
“Well, that depends; but all they’re worth. Do you want to contract yours as they come, straight fours at ten a head?”
“Ten a head!” said Jim Nabours with well-feigned surprise. “What? Fours like them? Fat and ready for market? Well there may be a little she-stuff in here and there, but we couldn’t help that. Us Texans always figgers one cow’s as old and as fat as another.”
“As good as any,” asserted the stranger. “There’s millions of acres of range north and west of Abilene, a-weeping and a-wailing for stock cattle. There’s millions of pounds of beef that’s got to be raised on Army contracts to feed the reservation Indians. There’s all America and all Europe east of here. Market? Why, man, we can take five million cattle, in five years, if you can bring them in! You’re the first, and you didn’t know it! You didn’t even know where Abilene was!”
“We don’t yet,” replied Nabours; “but we’re willing to rock along with you and have you show us.”
“I’ll be glad to! What d’you say to three cents a pound on the hoof?”
Nabours looked at him with astonishment in his eyes.
“Mister, you talk like them cows was sugar or coffee. I never did hear of ary man selling a cow that way. No man can tell how much a cow weighs by looking at him, and I never did see one weighed. Of course, I could make a scales by swinging a pole and putting a few men at the other end of it to balance up a cow—you can guess how much a man weighs pretty clost. But all that’d take too much time. No, a cow is a cow where I come from, whether he’s big or little.”
“Well, what d’you say to eleven dollars a head?”
“I don’t say nothing. These here cows is family pets, and we don’t like fer to part with them. But like enough this is the only herd that ever will come up from Texas, anyhow this year.”
“You wouldn’t say twelve dollars?”
“Straight count, a cow for a cow, as she tallies out?”
“Well, I’d sorter like to see the herd first.”
“It ain’t no trade,” said Nabours calmly. “If I’d sell them family favorites of ours the owner of Del Sol would feel sore—she shore would.”
“You say ’she’ would. Are you working for a widow?”
“She ain’t a widow yet, but she may be a’fore long.”
“Married?”
“The same answer. Not yet, but right apt to be.”
“How old is she?”
“Why, I don’t know. Plenty of cows we got in that herd is a heap older than she is.”
“And you’re taking a girl through to Abilene!”
“What’s wrong with Aberlene, friend?”
“Well,” admitted McCoyne, “we got eight saloons and five gambling palaces now; a good many railroad men and skin hunters and people like that hang around. It might be a little bit swift if you ain’t used to traveling fast.”
“What you say sounds cheerful. We’d like to wet the dust in our throats and play a few cards in a innocent way.”
“I wouldn’t say that Abilene ain’t safe,” argued the market man. “We got the best town marshal in Kansas, or are going to have if we can get him away from Hays City. Wild Bill Hickok is his name. He’s the best shot in Kansas.”
“He may be in Kansas, but he ain’t in Texas,” replied Nabours. “We had him along ourselves. You didn’t happen to meet up with a man named Dan McMasters in Caldwell, did you?”
McCoyne drew himself up.
“I don’t go to Caldwell. But since you mention it, that name sounds familiar. I met a McMasters over in the Baxter Springs country last winter; tall fellow, with a little mustache. He was the man that told me he was going to send up a Texas herd when he got back home.”
“He done so,” replied Nabours. “Here it is.”
“He certainly done us both a good turn. I was saying McCoyne—Joe McCoyne’s my name. I come from Indianny. I’m president of the stockyards up to Abilene. The whole Eastern country is out here hunting cattle. There’s a thousand miles of range north and west of us that’s got to have cattle. Why, cattle will be gobbled up as fast as you can drive them in.”
“You must be running a kind of cow heaven, friend,” said Jim Nabours. “Well, come and see our boss. You needn’t be scared, even if she ain’t married. I will pertect you against any designing female that might be smit by your looks.”
CHAPTER XXXVIN THE BEGINNING
THE Del Sol men with their new-found friend turned back to bid a temporary farewell to Jesse Chisholm and his wagon train, departing thereafter for the herd, which had been held some miles below. The Eastern man sat his horse somewhat strangely to the eyes of the Texans; but no matter what the speed, he ceased not joltingly to sound the praises of his community.
“Every time he come down in the saddle he says, ‘Aberlene! Aberlene! Kerchunk! Aberlene!’ ” explained Len Hersey to his fellows.
When they came into view of the great herd, held closely by the riders, Nabours pulled up with the enthusiasm of the natural drover.
“Look at ’em!” he exclaimed, waving a hand. “If that ain’t a perty sight I don’t know what is!”
“Great glory!” exclaimed the Abilene man. “I didn’t know there were that many cattle in the world! Sir, my fortune is made! Where’d you get them all?”
“In Texas we don’t ast no man that. I told you we done raise them cows by hand, every one of them.”
The Abilene man gave a deep sigh.
“You don’t know what that means!” said he. “The first herd up from Texas!” He babbled, speaking of revolutions, epochs, swift changes.
One by one he met the wild crew of the Del Sol men, who wore a garb and spoke a language unfamiliar to himself. Praying for trail herds from the South, the Northern men never really visualized the new personnel which was pushing north from the lower range. Indeed at that time of the American civilization there had been but little actual interchange of population between the North and the South. The natural expansion of the republic had been westward. As to the old cruel line of Mason and Dixon, it never fully was broken down by the Civil war. But here was the first break—the penetration of a peaceful, natural commerce, here on the Western plains. Through that opening, in the years immediately to come, flowed values greater than those of barter and trade in horned kine. A manly understanding passed back and forth, and out of that a tacit union, a concord in all young strong impulses. That union of North and South built the West overnight. The world has never seen a better country.
That empire gave us our first and only true American tradition—the tradition of the West. Great as that American tradition is, grotesque as we have rendered it, far as we have carried from dignity and truth the tradition of the West, “the Range” still is a word to conjure with to-day, and will be to-morrow. Here, then, was the very beginning of that great tradition. It was no more than a generation ago.
“My Lord!” repeated the Northern man. “Just look at them! I guess that’s all the cattle in the world.”
“No, I don’t reckon so,” replied Nabours. “We got sever’l left down in Texas. Come along; you must meet the owner of them all.”
They approached Taisie Lockhart’s camp where the giant carts—things of wonder to the stockyards man—stood gaunt and grim in the twilight. Taisie was superintending the preparation of the evening meal, her women busy at the fire. At first the Northern man took her to be one of the young riders of the herd. She stood straight and free of self-consciousness as any of the men; as brown of face and hand, much like them in apparel. She wore the universal checked trousers, stuffed into her boots. But the boots apparently had been made by loving hands, so neat were they, so sewed with countless little seams. And at their tops, in red, was the Lone Star of Texas.
Taisie’s cotton shirt, a man’s shirt, was open at the neck. Above the high-water mark of the ardent sun, protected by her hat brim, flowed back the mass of her bright hair, which for sake of comfort she wore now, as customarily, in a great queue wrapped with thong, as though she were some Indian woman. True, she might have been the forerunning arbiter of woman’s ways of costume fifty years later in the West; but Taisie Lockhart’s dress was not done in any imitation or any affectation. She had chosen it for two reasons—firstly, because she was broke; secondly, because it was convenient.
“Miss Lockhart,” remarked Jim Nabours in the formula which he best knew, “shake hands with Mr. ——. What did you tell me your name was?”
“McCoyne—Joe McCoyne, of Abilene, ma’am. I’m pleased to meet you.” Which also was in conformance with ineradicable formula.
Taisie held out her hand in silence, with her usual straight glance.
“You didn’t expect to see me down here from Abilene, did you, Miss Lockhart?” began the stockyards man.
“Why, no sir; are we almost there?”
“Right there. It ain’t much over two hundred mile. I knew there’d be a herd up this year. I was telling your foreman that I met a Mr. McMasters, Daniel McMasters, a while back, over around Baxter Springs. He said he was going down to Central Texas. You don’t happen to know him?”
The swift blood surged up to Taisie’s forehead.
“Why, yes; he rode with us for a time.”
But the Northern man was all for business. He cleared his throat.
“Miss Lockhart,” said he, “I’ve been offering your man twelve dollars a head straight through. I’d contract for them at that right here.”
Taisie Lockhart gave a sudden gasp. Twelve dollars a head meant riches! But she turned toward her trail boss, who had emitted an ominous cough, audible a quarter of a mile, and began now to wink so portentously that even the blind must have given him attention. She hesitated, her eyes dubious. The stranger laughed.
“I see you’ve got to talk it over together.”
But his zeal for Abilene overcame even his own disposition to do a turn in personal trade. Besides, the personality of this young woman produced its usual effect, on him as on most men.
“I want to buy your cattle, Miss Lockhart,” said he, “and maybe I will; but let’s not talk price any more down here. This is the first herd to come to Abilene, and I’m going to see that you get the best price possible, so when you carry the news back to Texas that’ll bring more herds up next year. I don’t want to rob as young and fine-looking a woman as you are; and besides that, the first one to come up the trail.”
“And the last!” said Jim Nabours conclusively. “You don’t know what I’ve been through!”
The stranger smiled humorously, his eyes once more turning to the young girl, of unmistakably gentle breeding. “In a way, you don’t belong here,” said he.
“Come an’ git it!” came the supper call of Buck, the negro cook, now rising at his fireside.
The men not engaged on the herd straggled in toward the fire. The distant crooning of the hands at the bed ground came through the twilight. The stockman threw back his shoulders, drew a deep breath.
“I been having a little fever and ague, ma’am,” said he; “but come to think of it, it’s quit. I’d rather be here than any place else in the world.”
“We have quinine,” said Taisie Lockhart, “and coffee and boiled beef, and some very good bread that Milly has made. Won’t you please sit down with us?”
They all sat upon the ground around the little fire, children, contented. The world still was young.
CHAPTER XXXVIROLL ALONG, LITTLE DOGIES!
LATE at night the leaders of the herd sat talking, but the start on the next day was early. The country ahead was now open and free of buffalo. Once more the great herd trailed out. They left the camp of Jesse Chisholm with his wagon train a little at one side, but the leaders rode over to say farewell to the taciturn old half-breed. McCoyne promised him many things if he would load his next cargo at Abilene instead of Wichita. And so they parted, as ships sailing seas but little known.
Thence on there was no need for the wagon tongue or the North Star. One Chisholm Trail, of many mythical ones, was now really begun. The marks of the wagon wheels were unmistakable. The giant steers of the Del Sol vanguard swung out along the main traveled road as though this was what they long had sought. McCoyne expressed wonderment at seeing so few men handle thousands of great animals.
“You’ve been doing ten or twelve miles a day?” said he. “We can make fifteen or twenty. Push them along. All Abilene is waiting for them.”
It was plain sailing and the weather was good. No tribute-seeking Indians appeared, and the cattle were as peaceable as though they never had dreamed of a run. The Del Sol outfit put mile after mile behind it, rapidly, steadily, the work oxen on the carts sometimes almost on a trot, the sore backs exempt in the remuda, every man feeling that trail’s end was not so far.
Between them and the Arkansas River now ran only one considerable stream—the Salt Fork, spoken of with respect by drovers, for quite customarily it offered swimming water. But now, even if the advanced season had not left the water low, the Salt Fork would have been by no means an insuperable obstacle, for Jesse Chisholm had left here a good raft which he had built for his own purposes. It was better than a bridge. The cattle swam the stream readily, confidently, and in brief order the carts were jerked across at the ends of spliced reatas. The entire crossing went forward methodically and without the loss of a single head.
“So that’s the way you do it?” commented the man of Abilene. “You had some rivers below here too?”
“Almost. This here is play compared to it,” said Nabours. “But you can go anywheres with cows if you know how. That’s the only thing us Texans does know. Yes, we got sever’l cows down in Texas. And I don’t see why this country here wouldn’t raise cows—in the summer anyhow.”
They advanced through the Osage country, over as beautiful grassland as a man ever saw, the prairie covering wavering knee-deep and spotted with many flowers. Wild game was in sight much of the time. There was not a weed. No plow had been here.
“Roll along, little dogies!” came the lazy voice of a swing man. “Roll along, roll along!”
Fifty miles more of happy, lazy, carefree loafing along the trail, and they left the straggling village of Caldwell on the right, just at the Kansas line. Nabours would not let his men go into town, but headed twenty miles to the westward across the grasslands of lower Kansas, making for the crossing of the Arkansas which Chisholm had established with his wagons.
Heretofore the advance had been happily and singularly free from annoyance at the hands of the Indian tribes whose great domain had been crossed. When well over the Kansas line, however, they were caught up by a little band of Osages who had followed along their trail, ignoring reservation limits for reasons of their own. In stature they were gigantic men, their heads partly shaved, leaving a high roach of dense, stiff hair after the traditional Osage custom. They were painted bravely enough in red and ocher, and all were armed with fine buffalo bows ofbois d’arc. Their leader and his band seemed friendly enough and disposed to parley. Not caring for such hangers-on, Nabours and a few other men stopped for a conference. The chief began with a request soon to become usual along the trail.
“You got plenty wohaw,” he began. “This Injun country. You give wohaw.”
He held up all the fingers of his hand.
“Give you ten cows?” exclaimed Jim Nabours. “I ain’t give a cow to nobody all the way up the trail, and I won’t give one to you. You go on back.”
“Good Injun!” said the leader of the Osages. He handed out a folded piece of paper. “Caldwell. Him send.”
He was a message bearer. Nabours took the letter.
“Why, this is from Dan McMasters!” said he. “Five days ago he was in Caldwell. Says he has gone on now to Wichita,” explaining to McCoyne and the others. “He may be at Aberlene by the time we get there.”
“Say, you, here!” he remarked to the chief. “We’ll give you one wohaw. You set down and wait a while. We’ll ride on up to the wohaws.”
“All right,” said the Osage partisan in good humor. “Him say you give wohaw. We bring you paper.”
They disposed themselves on the grass, their bows unstrung.
“You seem to be all the time hearing from this man McMasters,” said McCoyne. “How come he’s on ahead of you so far?”
“That’s a long story,” said Jim Nabours. “He did ride with us for a while.”
“I knew that man over at Baxter and on the Missouri border,” ruminated the man from Abilene. “Quiet sort of fellow—mysterious—never did say much. I was figuring on a market over there for Texas cattle. But I learned about a gang of raiders in there that had been cutting every herd that came up from Texas bound for Missouri or Iowa or Illinois. Those border ruffians killed probably a dozen men altogether. They tied up and whipped maybe a dozen more. They terrorized every trail outfit that came through there, and the natural result was that they kept off St. Louis from ever becoming a real cow town. Nothing could get through. A little thing sometimes makes a heap of difference later on in big things.
“The leader of that gang was a ruffian by name of Rudabaugh,” he added. “The Missourians finally run him south.”
“Yes,” said Nabours quietly. “The Texans have finally run him north again.”
“And this man McMasters was after him?” McCoyne turned suddenly.
“He might be. He is now. He’s been keeping ahead of us, and that’s the reason.”
He now explained at length the machinations of the trail pirates and the untimely end of them in the night battle on the Washita.
“He mostly plays a lone hand,” Nabours concluded. “He’s an officer in the Rangers. That’s putting law into Texas—the Rangers.”
“Well, we’ve only got one man to put law into Abilene. I’m going to hire Wild Bill Hickok for our town marshal. Wild Bill has got these bad people buffaloed. Counting in his work as a Union sharpshooter, under Curtis, in the Missouri country, he’d have to have a long gun stock to carry all his notches. It’s sure he’s killed somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred men. In 1860, when he was taking care of the stage stock over in east of Abilene, he was jumped by McCandless and his gang—ten men there were in all. You’ve heard of that fight? They were going to run off the stage stock for the Confederate Army. They tackled Bill in his shack, ten of them, and he was alone. He killed nine out of the ten by himself. Not so bad, eh? I don’t know as I ever knew Bill to serve a warrant or make an arrest. But I’ll bet one thing—if we get him for town marshal, Abilene will be first in graveyards, the same as she is first in everything else.”
“It shore looks like Dan McMasters has a pleasant time a-waiting for him,” commented Nabours. “But he’s usual able to take care of hisself.
“Now, I’ll have to cut out a beef for these yellow-bellied friends of ours,” he added. “We’ve picked up a shorthorn stray or so a couple of days ago, and put a Fishhook on him to keep him from catching cold. Like enough it was a Osage steer, anyhow, so I reckon I’ll let ’em have that one. Go cut it out, Len, when we come up with the herd.”
Osages and all, they rode along. Easily, lazily, as though he knew precisely where the animal was, Len Hersey found it, rode it out of the herd and drove it back close to the Indian group.
“Here’s your wohaw,” he said.
The Osage chieftain smiled amiably. A bow twanged. In five minutes the ribs of the beef were broiling on a prairie Osage fire. The dust of the great herd of spotted cattle was lessening to the north.