CHAPTER XXXMANY TRANSACTIONS
THE cattle, full fed and well-watered, had bedded down in their compact oblong, willing to rest after two days’ hard march. Nabours had doubled the night guard. The men in pairs rode in reverse around and around the herd, passed and repassed slowly, regularly, singing the cradle song of the cows.
Nabours, worn by long hours, early pulled his blankets over his face. Cinquo Centavos himself dozed under his ragged quilt, in his dreams comforted with the subconscious tinkling of the gray mare’s bell. In the cavalry camp, a half mile away, all was quiet save for the methodical tramp of the sentinels.
Midnight. Jim Nabours felt a strong hand laid on his shoulder.
“Hush!” whispered a voice. “It’s McMasters.”
“What’s wrong?” demanded the foreman, flying off his blanket.
“Rudabaugh’s gang will jump us in less than half an hour. Get all the men up. I am going to tell the soldiers.”
The loud challenge of a sentinel halted him, but soon he was admitted in the cavalry camp. Griswold was up at once. McMasters put before him a hurried report.
“They’re ahead about four or five miles,” he explained; “camped on the Washita. One of their hunters saw us to-day. He had just got in when I made the edge of their camp. I was close enough to their camp to hear them talking. But I don’t think he knew the soldiers were here. He must just have seen some of our cattle. Of course they know what herd it is. There are about twenty of them. They’re going to try to surprise us. You’ll help us surprise them, won’t you?”
Griswold rubbed his chin.
“Well, I don’t know that the U. S. Army has any special cause to act as a police posse in a family row; but I suppose I’ll have to throw in with you. Fine place for a woman, isn’t it?”
He had no reply to that. But a few moments later Taisie Lockhart heard steps approaching her cart. She put out her head to answer Nabours’ hurried call; saw McMasters and Griswold also standing close. Nabours announced the plan already made by these three.
“There’s danger, Miss Taisie. The Rudabaugh gang is coming. They’ll come right to your cart the first thing, like enough. Hand us out that chest. We’re going to hide it under the beds by the fire. Come on with us. The men are all up now. Crawl into any bed you see and get all the blankets and saddles around you that you can. You’ll be safer there than here. They want what’s in that box.”
An instant later, fastening her jacket, she ran, but turned back. McMasters was not coming.
“But you,” she began—“where are you going?”
“I am going back to get in your cart,” said he. “That will probably be where they’ll head in.”
Apparently he did not hear her speak again.
Under Griswold’s military orders now, two long curving lines of soldiers and trail men were spread out, leaving a wide opening at the end where the attack was to be expected. The orders were that each man was to lie flat in the grass and not to fire until the invaders were well inside the lines.
Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed, a half hour. The herd still slept well. The riders, duly warned, kept up their crooning. The embers of the fire smoldered.
Suddenly the strain of vigilance was broken. The night air was rent by the shrill yell of the Comanche war whoop!
It was no war cry of the attacking party. It was only the devilish fashion that old Yellow Hand, close guarded, had chosen to appraise approaching invaders of his own presence and of his defiance of the men who held him captive. Whatever he expected to gain by his bravado, the wily old Iago got quick results in a swinging blow at the side of his head from a cavalry carbine which laid him out for the rest of the fight.
The fight, of course, was on at once; the keen ears of the savage had detected the presence of the enemy between the two lines of guards. The night went alight in slanting streaks of rifle fire. There was general mêlée. The Del Sol men and the troopers could make out little, except that their enemy was between the jaws of the trap that had been set for them.
One man of the assailants, unsuspected, had crawled close to the cart where Taisie Lockhart had slept. When the yell of the reckless savage broke the air—followed by the general rattle of musketry—there came the roar of the startled herd once more stampeding in the night. No cattle could stand under this. In this increase of the confusion the crawling invader arose and made a rush toward the cart. There came two red flashes from the front flap. The man fell forward and lay motionless. For a second time Rudabaugh had failed to get his coveted title to uncounted Texas acres. At the same hands, another of his boldest men had fallen.
From the rear of the cook cart came the roar of a Sharpe Berdan. Cinquo had gone into action.
“I got him! I got one!”
The boy began to crawl out from under the cart, hastening to where he saw something lying in the grass. He had lain close to the spot where the mistress of Del Sol lay bundled up in blankets; and he had thrown around her a barricade of every saddle he could find, combined with every roll of blankets.
A bugle sounded, the signal for the two lines to close in. When they heard the rush of many feet on both sides of them Rudabaugh and his men knew that they were trapped by vastly superior numbers. Not many of them were left standing. Of these, all now sought quarter. There came cries of, “Don’t shoot! We surrender!” But the Del Sol men, fearing treachery, were merciless. When they had crowded together the remainder of the bandits the trail men rushed upon them with pistol butts and quirts and rifle barrels. The few left alive were roped and bound.
Of the score of assailants only two remained alive and uncaptured—Rudabaugh and the crafty man known as Baldy. Crouching low, they got off in the grass at the best speed they could muster, and until tally was made at the camp fire no one missed them. Not until daylight, indeed, could the full list of fatalities be determined. For the defenders there was but one casualty—Al Pendleton, who had got a shot through the leg and was disabled for the time.
What had been a trail camp was now anything but that. The men gathered their prisoners closer to the fire, built it up. A trooper dragged up Yellow Hand, barely conscious, sullen and silent.
“Here is your friend, gentlemen,” said Griswold grimly to the surviving men of the attacking party. “He did all he could for you. I ought to blow his brains out, and yours out, too, and I’ve a damned good mind to do it.”
He turned toward Dan McMasters, who had come to the fireside.
“Now about these men,” he said, “I am going to take them out with me on a charge of killing those Indian women down near the Arbuckles. They’re accessories anyway. I’ve got no jurisdiction and no warrant, and it isn’t my business; but what’s the Army for? Now about this old thief, I’m going to ask him a few questions.”
He jerked Yellow Hand roughly to his feet.
“Come here, Danny,” he called out to his interpreter. “Tell this old liar I want to ask him some questions.”
“Says he don’t want to talk,” began the interpreter, as the savage grunted a few sullen syllables.
“Tell him he’s got to talk. Ask him this: Ask him, suppose white man come into camp and shoot two women, what does Comanche warrior do?”
“Says Comanche warrior catch white man some day.”
“Tell him the chief of these people that came into our camp ran away like a coyote in the grass. Tell him that man, last week, he shoot two Comanche women, just to see them kick. Yellow Hand tried to be the friend to-night of the man who shoots Comanche women. Yellow Hand acts not like a chief but like a foolish person.”
Rapid and excited conversation for some time between the interpreter and the warrior.
“Says Yellow Hand and his men shot a few buffalo. The Kiowas said all right. Says he’s good Indian. Says white man tie him up and knock him in the head. Says holler just now in the dark because he feel good. Says he don’t know who come. Says if it’s all right for white man to try Comanche, then all right for Comanche to try white man. Says suppose if that man killed two Comanche women, then white man catch him for Comanche. Then Comanche try him plenty.”
“How! How!” exclaimed Griswold. “Then they’d be willing to forget that I asked Yellow Hand to ride with me a while?” Griswold’s face was animated. He was working out some plan.
The interpreter replied, after translating some Comanche and Spanish mixed:
“Says, yes, sure. Comanches like this country. Comanches no want to fight. Says his young men will have bad hearts if they find two of their women killed. Says s’pose warrior gets killed—all right. S’pose woman gets killed, that’s plenty bad shame.”
“Ask him what people this?”
Griswold suddenly held up before Yellow Hand’s face the two moccasins which McMasters had brought with him from the Arbuckle Trail.
The old savage looked once, twice, closely. His face underwent an astonishing change—was convulsed with surprise, grief, anger. He gave but one ejaculation and drew his blanket across his face.
“Says his people! Says his family—his squaws! He know them shoe!”
“Yellow Hand! Yellow Hand!” The officer shook the old chief roughly by the shoulder. “Listen to me! Chief of the Comanches, this is our council now! Me, I talk!” The soldier stripped back the blanket from the Comanche’s face.
“Yellow Hand, for years we have been trying to get you to stop killing our people on the Staked Plains. The Great Father has always fought you fair. The Great Father never killed your women. The Great Father will put his blanket over his face when he hears of this thing.
“Listen Yellow Hand! Chiefs do not break their word. If we follow the man who did that—that man who ran away—and bring him to you and give him to your people to try him in your village will you think that the Great Father is just in his heart?”
“Says yes, he would.” The interpreter had made it plain.
“Listen, Yellow Hand! I have been trying to make treaty with you. I have been trying to get a great piece of land here where the game is plenty for the Comanches and the Kiowas, a place where they could sit down. You have not answered me about that. I have followed you. I have fed you. I have not killed your women.
“Listen, Yellow Hand! The white men are going west into your hunting country. The white men are coming north here. You see them. My young men with long knives are coming out too. They will surround you, as many as leaves on the trees. You can never kill them all. They have guns that shoot seven days.
“Listen, Yellow Hand! When the buffalo are gone you will be hungry. I gave you a great piece of land. I asked you to sit down. I gave you a treaty. I make no war now on the Comanches or the Kiowas. I will give you a good place, many miles, down by the mountains of the Wichitas, where there is much game.
“Listen, Yellow Hand! Tell him to answer me, Danny! If I do all this for you, and if I bring that man back who killed your women, will the Comanches come in and sit down by the side of the Kiowas in this country where all around them are the men of the other tribes, who have taken treaty with the Great Father? Tell him to answer, damn him, Danny!”
Yellow Hand himself sprang to his feet, cast off his blanket and stood now the Indian warrior and orator. Chief of a people, he spoke to an audience who understood him not, an audience who sat about him in the dark; but the fire of his words showed his conviction, made him understandable.
“Says he is ready to be killed. Says he tells the truth. Says his heart is sad because his women have been killed. Says if you will bring him in the man that did that, then he will be good Indian. Says he will make treaty. Says he will sit down by the side of his friends, the Kiowas. Says he will do nothing now without asking the Great Father. Says he has nothing more to say.”
“How! How!” exclaimed the officer.
He reached out and took the hand of the Comanche in his own. Then he turned toward McMasters.
“Dead or alive, we’ve got to have that man Rudabaugh. Do you know what that means? The man who can do that will be of more use to Texas than almost any man Texas ever produced. That means the end of the Comanche war. That means the Comanches will take a reservation in the Nations. Even Indians have some idea of actual justice. Dead or alive, I want Rudabaugh!”
“Take him away, men.” He nodded to his top sergeant. “Feed this man well. Give him coffee, give him sugar, give him anything we’ve got. Build up the fire. This is one good night’s work!”
He continued his talk to McMasters, pacing up and down in his excitement.
“If we could make peace for Texas, if we could clear the western border for settlement—why, we’d be preparing a cattle trail clear across the Staked Plains! Other herds? You can be sure more are going to follow yours, farther west, as soon as the road is clear. I’d rather fight Indians than feed them any day, but if I’ve got to do both I am going to do them both on the square.
“Now I want Rudabaugh. When we’ve brought him in we have done more for the cowmen of Texas than all the railroads and all the United States Government ever yet have done. Little things sometimes run into big ones; good may come out of an evil deed. I want to see that low-down brute who killed those women. The sight of his face is a thing right dear to me.
“Yellow Hand,” he said, once more addressing the Comanche, “your hands are no longer tied. In the morning go back to your people. You shall ride alone if you wish. Tell your people that I am going back to my own village at the Wichita hills and sit down. Tell them I will not follow the Comanches this summer. Tell them that my young men are following the men who killed the women of the Comanches. All these men are going on the war trail. They will not rest until they bring back that man.” And thus spoke Danny to the chief.
“Well, sunny days and starry nights to you, my dear!”
The old soldier turned to Anastasie Lockhart. Her troubled eyes looked into his an instant. He would not listen to her stammering attempt at thanks.
A bugle sounded. The troops took formation, rode away, jaunty guidon at the head; a waif of silk in a buckskin land, themselves waifs of fortune, doing their duty unseen on the far frontier, with thanks of no one and criticism from all. They were men of the Army which had saved a country and now was finding one—our Army—never understood; one day, to-day, our day, ignorantly to be despised.
“It looks like you was riding, too,” commented Nabours. He nodded to the saddled horse of McMasters, the additional horse with light pack, whose lariat was thrown over the saddle horn.
“Yes,” said McMasters in his cold and noncommittal way.
“I wish you didn’t have to go. The men don’t want to see you go. It’s only kind of hard for them to say so. But afore you do ride north—and I reckon I know why you do—I wisht you’d sort of give me some idee of the country ahead. You’ve heard or seen more of it than I ever have.”
McMasters took a stick and began to make a map in the smoothed ashes of the camp fire.
“I’d like to help you over the Washita,” he said: “but you won’t find that a very bad crossing—steep banks, and swift, but narrow. You’d better make some sort of raft and get the carts across.
“The next big river is the main Canadian, not so far above here. It’ll be dry, always very little water in it. It’s bone-dry sometimes for a hundred miles.
“The North Fork of the Canadian—it runs here—is the crookedest river out of doors. It carries more water than the big river. You will probably have to swim some there, but you ought to make it all right.
“You’ll get through the blackjack country, and then you’ll come up to the Cimarron-easy fording. Just beyond that you’ll be somewhere close to latitude thirty-six. You might then almost say you are getting out of the South and into the North.
“My father and old Colonel Lockhart always used to talk to me about wintering all their cattle just under that line. They said that would make them free of sticks for the next season. Some longhorns took fever even as far north as Illinois. It didn’t make Texas popular.
“Now, when you get north of 36—here’s where it runs—you have only got the Salt Fork of the Arkansas between you and the main Arkansas. It comes out of Kansas not so very far from where you’ll hit the Kansas line.”
“It sounds right far,” said Jim Nabours.
“Yes: when you get up in there you’re coming into the edge of a thousand miles of open range, the best cattle ground out of doors; and there isn’t a cow in it from one end to the other. That country’s waiting for cows. It needs them as much as our cows need a market.
“Well, you’ll find out all these things as you come to them.”
Always scant of speech, he turned away, swung into the saddle. Reaching down he held out a hand to Cinquo, the boy herder, who had followed him.
“We done saved her, Mister Sher’f,” said the boy.
But Dan McMasters did not cast a glance back of him to the white-topped cart which made the only home of Taisie Lockhart.
“Now,” said Jim Nabours, turning to his own horse, “everybody can start like he pleases except us. Afore I need a map I need some cows. Come on, men, we got to foller out one more run. Lucky if we get seven and a half cows to Aberlene.”
A Paramount Picture.North of 36.IN THE MIDST OF THE RIVER CROSSING.
A Paramount Picture.North of 36.IN THE MIDST OF THE RIVER CROSSING.
CHAPTER XXXITHE JONAH
“MOVE ’em out, boys! We’ll see what’ll happen next.” Nabours spoke with a half sigh in his voice. The departure of McMasters and of the soldiers had left a strange feeling of loneliness among the Del Sol men. They began to brood, to lose morale. This was after two more days of riding, combing cattle out of the timber along the Washita, which very luckily had caught and left partly nugatory the last run of the much harassed herd.
The hour was not yet late; and although the tired trail hands had little enough of sleep, there was no active murmuring, and the order of the day once more began, the long line of longhorns stringing out, the guides on either side.
The cattle paced on methodically enough, but the arrival at the Washita was so late in the day that the trail boss concluded not to cross until the following morning. They found the banks as McMasters had said—high and steep; and the river had swimming water. But much to their joy they found a good-sized raft which some one, probably Rudabaugh and his men, for reasons of their own, had spent some time and care in building.
“Well, there won’t many of them need it now,” commented Nabours, “and we do. That’s the first luck we’ve had. I’m scared to swim that girl again.”
They crossed the carts without difficulty in the morning, and the entire herd swam over easily, a narrow trail being plain on the other side.
Once more on their way, and with the Washita behind them, a certain feeling of light-heartedness came to the trail drovers. They sang cheerily to their cows as they rode alongside, caught the feel of the new country lying on ahead.
The weather was not unfavorable, but in the afternoon the older trail men began to look at the sky. There was a dull, lifeless feeling in the air. The wind had ceased. A bank of clouds lay black in the lower west.
“It may rain,” said Jim Nabours, coming over to Taisie’s near-by camp after the herd was turned off to bed down. “You and your women, Miss Taisie, had better sleep in the carts to-night. I hope to the Lord our little dogies won’t take a notion to run again to-night! This herd’s getting plumb spoiled. Before long they’ll run every time a feller lights a cigarrito.”
“Look as that lightning in west, Jim,” remarked Cal Dalhart. “It’s worse than cigarritos. I hope she’ll pass around.”
But the prairie storm did not intend to pass around them. They lay directly in the center of a low barometer. The air was oppressively hot, so still that a leaf would have fallen straight to the ground; yet the face of the western cloud was lit with continuous electrical discharges. An uneasiness came into the air that even the cattle felt. The greenhead flies had swarmed in the grass all day. Now clouds of mosquitoes made life a burden for men and beasts. It was hard to bed the cattle down.
“Set the wagon tongues on the North Star, boys, while you can see it,” said Jim Nabours. The dark cloud was steadily rising. “This is going to be one hell of a night. You’ll need your slickers. Look yonder! I’ve heard tell about that sort of a thing, but I’ve never saw it afore.”
He pointed toward the bed ground. In the strange electrical condition of the air the horns of each steer showed two little balls of flame, thousands of them in the total, a strange and awesome sight in the gloom. As the night watch rode later they saw electricity on the tips of their horses’ ears. It almost dripped from the air; the earth seemed bathed in it.
At midnight the stars passed away under a high vanguard of scurrying clouds. The strange tensity in the air increased as continuous rolls of thunder came closer.
“We’ve all got to get on the herd,” said Nabours finally. “There’s going to be trouble.”
The men all mounted their night horses and made ready. There came to them all a feeling of pygmylike incompetency as the edge of the storm extended itself as though with some inner propelling power. The wind had not yet begun. They knew they were in for one of the terrible electrical storms of the prairies.
The steady flashes of lightning along the cloud face broke into jagged forks. Intermittent among these came short bolts of the chain lightning. A smell of sulphur filled the air. A strange blue tint seemed to come into some of the lightning bolts. At times there seemed to be a continuous sheet of fire along the grass tops towards the west. This later was broken by balls of fire which rolled along the ground, exploding like bombshells. There seemed nothing in the air except light; sparks and whirls and wheels of light, like so many pin wheels. A strange, alarming, oppressive feel, as though of a settling fog, came upon them all. If a man reached a hand to his hat brim the electricity literally dripped from it.
Rarely, even on the high prairies, did the tremendous electrical disturbances ever reach such violence; not one of these hardened range men had ever seen the like of this. But to the wonder of all the cattle did not at once make any break. They seemed stupefied themselves. They now all were on their feet, but in the continuous succession of blinding flashes on every side, the crash of thunder coming from all quarters, they could form no course for running and stood rooted in sheer terror. Nor was there a man who did not think his own end had come.
The climax came in a straight bolt from above, which struck and exploded directly in the middle of the herd. The detonation was as though a giant shrapnel shell had dropped. Twenty cattle were killed outright. Two horses dropped. A rider was smitten dead, another came out of the shock dazed and for some hours stone deaf. The old Mexican, Sanchez, had a fashion of wearing a pair of ancient spectacles. They were burned from his ears, only the bow between the rims remaining, and that burned deep into his nose. Len Hersey boasted a fancy tie with a stickpin, once bought in better days. The gold was melted from it, the stone dropped in the grass. The nap of his sombrero was singed smooth. A score of unbelievable phenomena, a series of miraculous escapes came all at once.
This last exploding bolt, so disastrous in its effect, was more than any herd could stand. The cattle started like a covey of quail. The universe seemed in dissolution. There was nothing for the men to do but follow as best they could. It was as safe in one place as in another, and of shelter there was none. Never was a wilder ride than that night; for now, with a rush and steady roar, came the wind and the slanting rain. The encampment at the bed ground was afloat, deserted. Old Milly put out her head.
“Miss Taisie! Miss Taisie!” she called. She got no answer. “My Lord! she done killed!” she called out to Anita.
Then arose her lamentations continuously as she lay in her drenched blankets. They two were all that remained. Even Buck was gone.
The run in a general way had headed north. A couple of miles ahead, between them and the Canadian River, lay a little boggy creek lined with thickets. Suddenly enlarged by the rain, it overflowed and made very soft footing for fifty or a hundred yards. Into this boggy trap the animals plunged in their madness. Within a few moments a third of the herd was bogged down. An inexplicable confusion took place among the others. No man could do anything here. The riders only followed such strings of cattle as they could hear farther down the stream. They all knew that when daylight came they would have their work to do in salvaging from the quagmire. Most of them tried to find their way back to camp, and those who made it sat huddled, drenched, as the weird flame-edged clouds passed on. Until dawn, they never knew there was a dead man lying in the grass on the bed ground three hundred yards from the camp, among the dead cattle and horses. Well, it was another grave; and this made the first duty of the day. They put up the third little headboard. So passed Al Pendleton. Though crippled by his gunshot wound, he had insisted on taking saddle.
Now the work of snaking out bogged cattle—the most unwelcome of all range work—must go forward along the muddy stream, hour after hour, as soon as the depressing dawn gave light for the beginning. The waters falling, some of the cattle struggled ashore as soon as they could see. Others needed but little help, a few had to be abandoned. In this work of roping and dragging, it took two men to handle a steer. As soon as one of the wild creatures got his feet he was certain to charge his rescuer. Hard work, dirty work, dangerous work; slow, utterly disheartening. But it was here to be done. Once more, slowly, a battered and begrimed cohort of broad horns began to assemble, watched by tired, muddy, cursing men.
“Sinker,” called Nabours to the boy as he came by coiling his muddy rope in the gray cold dawn, “you go on and find Dalhart, and ride back to camp. I don’t know where the rest of the horses went. Drive in what cows you find. It ain’t so far. Tell the cook we’ll be in for a little coffee, some of us, right soon.”
These two, so commanded, came into camp only to learn the news from Milly. The bed of Taisie Lockhart was empty. Her horse was gone.
“I’ll bet I know!” said Cinquo. “I’ll bet she follered the remuda in the dark!”
He was off, following the plain trail of the running horses, Dalhart at his side. They rode hard for a mile. The horses had struck timber, slowed up and scattered.
“I see her!” called out the boy at last. “That’s her zebry horse anyway.”
The white-banded son of Blancocito was not to be mistaken. But the saddle was empty! At the foot of a near-by tree lay the object which they sought.
She was alive, was sitting up, propped against a tree trunk; indeed, was on the point of mounting. So much they saw with sudden joy as they flung down and ran to her.
The man pushed the boy away roughly. Kneeling, Dalhart caught the girl in his arms, uttering impetuous words. What he saw filled Cinquo with shame and horror. This man had touched the divinity of Del Sol! He was holding her in his arms! He was going to kiss her! Sacrilege!
Cinquo saw flame points. He sprang forward, his long revolver in his hand.
“Say, you! You let go of her, mister! Stop now, or I’ll stop you for shore!”
The boy was blubbering in his excitement, but as Dalhart turned he saw that the aim of the weapon was true. Taisie beat at him with her hands, weakly, pushing him away.
“I’ll wring your neck!” began Dalhart, starting toward the boy. Only the girl’s voice saved them one or both.
“No! No!” she called. “He means well! Cinquo, come here!”
Dalhart turned to her almost savagely.
“You promised me!” he said. “You gave me your word down there! Is this how you keep your promise?”
But between the two of them, the girl with her tears and the boy with his revolver, Cal Dalhart got on very ill with his wooing.
“I can wait,” said he slowly at last.
In his sobbing excitement the boy was dangerous as a rattlesnake, and Dalhart was wise enough to know it. Only one voice could calm him. Taisie spoke with decision.
“Throw down your gun, Cinquo! Drop it, I tell you!”
Cinquo obeyed. His tears came freely now. He trembled.
“Trouble with me is, ma’am,” said he, “I got chills and fever. To-day I got ’em both. I been up all night. I don’t give a damn for that man, but this here is awful hard for you.”
“Cinquo,” said Taisie, putting her hand on his grimy shirt sleeve as she drew him beside her, “you are as good a man as I’ve got. Listen now! I’m not hurt. I just ran into a tree in the dark and got knocked out of the saddle. For a long time I didn’t know anything—my head’s bruised; but I was going to get up and ride right soon. Now go and find the horses; they’re not far. I saw the bell mare just below.”
The boy, shivering in his saddle, racked by the native ague, went off dully about his duties. He cast an eye over his shoulder, saw Dalhart riding close to the side of the mistress of Del Sol.
“The trouble with you is,” broke out Dalhart moodily, “you don’t know how a man can love you—you don’t know how I love you!”
He reached out a hand to touch the bridle of her saddle horse, which flung its head impatiently.
“I think I do,” said Taisie slowly. “You love me like a man. They’re all alike.”
“I believe you do love that damned Gonzales renegade. He’s gone again, and he may come back, or he may not. What you need is a man to take care of you; some one better than that cold-blooded killer that ain’t got a heart for either man or woman!”
“Stop! I tell you I want to hear no more of this!” The girl’s voice had in it a quiet fury. “At least I never have heard that man say a word against you or any one else. If he’s a killer he’d face his man, I’m sure of that, and not curse him behind his back.”
“He’d better not say anything about me,” Dalhart blustered.
But Taisie Lockhart’s contemptuous laugh at that was the cruelest thing he had ever heard in all his life. She spurred on and left him.
Dribbles of the herd continued to come in. The draggled encampment was slow to take on even a little order. The men had begun to lose confidence, to dread their luck. And now was time for a repetition of the scene on the south bank of the Red—another rider must find burial in his blankets. Never had the spirits of the men been so low, the hope of success so faint, the savage irritability of all so unmistakable.
It took a day and a half to finish the unhappy duties of the last camp below the Canadian and drive forward the remade herd. It was necessary to follow down the boggy stream to find a sound crossing. Beyond, within a mile or so, lay the main Canadian. Here at least they met no trouble. The spongelike sands had swallowed up the torrents until only an occasional thread of lazily trickling water marked the wide expanse from bank to bank. The cattle, warm and thirsty, seemed disposed to break ranks and explore these little trickles of water, so that the men had enough to do. Dalhart rode moodily, indifferently, on his point.
“Damn it, man!” called Del Williams to him, approaching him after one more chase after a wisp of stragglers. “I’d think you could ’tend to your own end part ways somehow!”
It was the first time he had spoken to Dalhart in days. Their enmity was smoldering.
“I don’t need any help from anybody about handling cows,” retorted the other; “least of all from you.”
Del Williams rode straight up to him at what seemed a challenge.
“I don’t see you for no cowman, myself,” said he.
They sat face to face midway of the dry river bed.
“I want to know what you mean,” said Dalhart. “I’ve been as good a hand on this trail as you have.”
“I don’t think so. Nothing but luck kept you from drownding that girl crossing the Red. More than that, it was you that let logs come through the cattle when they was swimming the day before. That started the mill. Four hundred cows lost and two men drownded. You was upriver side of the herd.”
This was mortal affront, as Del Williams was willing that it should be. At the time both men were unarmed.
“You know I won’t stand that,” said Dalhart.
“You heard it plain,” rejoined Williams quietly. “Make your play any time you like.”
“All right, I will make it! We both said we’d hold off till we struck Abilene. We’ll not both ride south together,” said Dalhart savagely.
“I hope not,” smiled Del Williams. “I have got plenty of grief riding in sight of you going north.”
Neither man liked to be the first to back his horse. Their actions caught the sight of Nabours, who started back.
“Look here!” he began. “What are you two doing here?”
“Well,” began Dalhart, “he told me I wasn’t doing my work.”
“Then he told you plumb right. Look at you now, both of you. You two give me your word, both of you, that you’d quit this quarreling till you got to Aberlene. Now quit it or else get out. If a little more happens I am going to get on the prod my own self.”
They separated. Del Williams later approached Nabours, both moody, sore.
“Jim,” said he, “look at the luck! Could anything more happen to us? I tell you, there’s a Jonah somewheres on this herd.”
“There shore is!” rejoined the harried foreman. “There shore is! And it’s got red hair.”
CHAPTER XXXIILAZYING ALONG
UPON even the most seasoned outdoor men the weather has undeniable influence. Came now a bright sun and gentle winds. The prairie lay like a silver sea. The surliness of the men vanished, they were children again. Once more the force of custom, of duty, made itself felt.
One more camp brought them to the North Fork of the Canadian, a more serious proposition than had been the main river of that name. The channel was narrower and deeper, and the banks, especially upon the south side, much more steep. There was only a narrow channel of swimming water, but not a man in the outfit would have consented to see the mistress of Del Sol undertake to swim her own horse across even the narrowest channel. The entire herd was held up for half a day while the men make a rude raft sufficient to cross the carts and their occupants. They dug down the bank on the farther shore so that better egress might be offered for the cattle.
“By the time a cow has swum a river,” said Jim Nabours to expostulating men, who did not like shovel work, since that, at least, could not be done on horseback, “he’s plumb tired, like enough. Make him climb a steep bank and he may fall back in. The worst place for them to get crowded is on the far side of a river. Now you fellows go on and dig a nice path, or else maybe we won’t have no cows a-tall before long. I’m scared to make a tally, way it is.”
So they passed yet another unknown river and swung on out, their own trail makers.
“I wish to God I knowed where we was,” grumbled the trail boss to Len Hersey, carefree cowhand, to whom he happened to be talking. “Unless’n that wagon tongue has got warped we’re still heading north. I done set her on the North Star last night my own self. But a trail scout had orto have a watch and a compass, and there ain’t nary one of either in this whole outfit.”
Hersey took a chew of tobacco.
“Heap o’ things in life ain’t needful,” said he; “just only folks gets used to them, that’s all. That lead steer Alamo’s all right if nobody don’t move the North Star. He’s got his eye sot on that. I seen him standing up the other night about one o’clock, looking at that star with one eye. He done wink at me with the other one. He shore knows where we’re at, Jim. You’d oughtn’t to worry. This suits me, although I will say that this here shirt I got now might be a little better around the elbows. I hate to go to meeting in it.”
“When I was a boy,” said Nabours reminiscently, “the onliest kind of church we had was camp meeting. I ain’t saw one of them for quite a while.
“Them big meetings used to bring in everybody from all over. The preacher’d throw the camp in some nice grove, and folks would build a shed with a brush roof and make some seats out of slabs. That was the church. I’ve saw a bearskin used for a pulpit cover. If there was extra ministers on hand, sometimes they’d have rawhide-bottom chairs made for them. The mourner’s bench, it always had a good rawhide bottom too. There used to be plenty straw scattered around between the benches for the sake of them that got conviction right strong and begun to throw fits. What with horses and dogs and babies, there was quite a settlement to a good camp meeting, while it lasted. The men didn’t always have hats and the women couldn’t always afford calico, but I can’t see but what we got along all right.
“Them days a feller had to load a rifle at the front end exclusive—no Henry rifles then. It was perlite for to lean your shooting iron against a tree and hang your powder horn on it before you went in to get religion. My pap always taken a drink of corn licker afore he set in; but he always put down a gourdful of cold water on top of it, so it didn’t hurt him none, he told me.
“I recollect when we built the first log school in the valley. It was about ten foot square. But come to style, the courthouse up to Sherman, twenty years ago, it made a ree-cord. I was there when that house was built. It was twenty foot square. That and a few furrows of plowed ground was all there was to the county seat. We dedicated her with a barbecue; a barbecue was the only thing Texas could afford then. Huh! It’s the only thing she can afford now. We all sot under a brush shed and everybody felt right good. There was a barrel of whisky and a tin cup and a nigger with a fiddle. That’s the way to start a county seat right.
“There wasn’t a foot of railroad anywheres in them days. Yet in Texas we’ve got over a hunderd miles of railroad built already. The Lord knows what’ll happen next.
“You talking about shirts, Len! Enduring of the war, three or four years ago, all my folks had to make their own shirts. The women folks had to weave and spin the woolsey. First thing I can remember was helping to braid hide and horse-hair ropes. Everybody tanned their own leather with oak bark. We made our own saddle trees out of forks and rawhide, and we covered them with our own leather—lastro,rosaderos, taps and all. We didn’t have no wells; we drunk out’n the creeks. Some neighbor had to make all the shoes we got. We ground our corn meal in a hand mill and we made our own wagons and ox yokes. If we got a loom or spinning wheel we had to make that too. Folks used to make hats out of palmetto; they braided them theirselves. What we got done we had to do; there wasn’t no one to hire nor nothing to pay them with.
“Shirt? Why a shirt, now, Len—a shirt in the old times used to last a feller for years. Has yores?”
“It shore has,” replied Len Hersey. “She’s been a plumb good one, too, and I’m sorry to see her go. My mammy made her for me, I don’t know how long back, but quite some time. Trouble about shirts is, anyways boughten ones, it takes so much for spurs and boots and saddles a feller ain’t got much left to buy a shirt. I wouldn’t be no ways contented with one of them homemade saddles of yourn no more. It don’t leave much for shirts atter you got a cow outfit paid fer.
“But as I was sayin’, I’m happy just to drift along over this here country. Ain’t she fine? This morning, along when the sun was shinin’ so perty, you’d orter seen old Sanchez’ fighting rooster! He natural flewed up on the cart and crowed to a fare ye well, he felt that good!”
“He’d ’a’ been a lot better off if he’d ’a’ sot on top the cart every night,” commented Nabours. “Anita, old Sanchez’ woman, she starts out with three roosters and eight hens, allowing, I reckon, to start a hen ranch somewhere up north in case we got busted and couldn’t get home. She can’t no ways start one now. The skunks and wildcats and coyotes has got ’em all excepting old Mister Gallina, and he shy part of one wing.
“Ain’t that rooster like a fool Texan? He’s lonesome and broke, and don’t know where he’s at, and part of his comb is tore, and he can’t fly much; but, ‘Praise God,’ says he, ‘I got both my spurs!’ ”
“Shore he does,” nodded Len Hersey. “All the whole state o’ Texas ever has owned has been a pair o’ spurs.
“Funny how time changes,” he went on, lolling on his saddle horn as he spoke. “When my pap moved into Ulvade County cows wasn’t worth nothing. The only thing to do was to kill them for their hides, and if you got four bits for a hide that was big money. Lately people got a dollar apiece fer hides. I wouldn’t be surprised ef we got two dollars a hide in Aberlene. We’ll like enough have to sell ’em fer the hides. Ain’t no money in cows.
“I was on a herd oncet that driv to Shreveport time of the war. We got into cockleburs so heavy the cows’ tails got like clubs. They’d hung up by the tails in the piney woods over in Louisiana. You could hear ’em bawl bloody murder. I don’t know how many we left hanging in the piney woods. There wasn’t no money in that drive and the cows got thin as rails. We couldn’t even skin ’em.”
“Huh!” commented the older man. “The longer you live the nearer you’ll come to learning how many things can happen to folks that trails cows, son. Give us two or three more acts of God on this drive, and we’ll be lucky ef we hit Aberlene with fifty head of cows to skin. We-all may have to sell our saddles to get home.”
“Then I wouldn’t get no new shirt?”
“I ain’t promising you none.”
“Well,” said Len Hersey philosophically, reaching in a pocket for loose tobacco, “so long’s a man has got his spurs he don’t need a thousand shirts nohow. I don’t see nothing to worry about.”