The Big Corral, page 10
There was another, even more impelling reason for swinging them now. If allowed to run, the full weight of the herd would overwhelm the two chuck wagons, rolling them over, grinding down with the grim precision of the mills of the gods. If that happened, hunger indeed would ride north with them.
Doll had been on foot. He was in the saddle with a jump, leaning forward, gripping with his knees, shaking out the reins. No need, for the moment, to do more than that. His cayuse knew what to do at a time such as this as well as he did, was just as eager to do it. Give it its head and pray that it kept its feet.
North was racing beside him, as were Ames and Rowe and half a dozen others. Half a score against seven thousand. No time to look or choose now. You could only hope that there would be no hole or stone in the way to trip a horse. Now it was a solid mass of hoofs and horns coming at them, shaking the earth, sending up an enveloping cloud of dust. Keep running; and pray for luck.
They were quartering to reach the tip of the wave which surged at them. Not led, this time, by the big steer with one eye. There was no leadership here, only flesh in the mass. Running at first in fear but with the sheer joy of deviltry aflame in wild blood. Running then in a terror generated of their own momentum, the wail of it rising in a wild bellow from thousands of throats. A bawl mounting and hoarse, such as might have come from the mouth of Paul Bunyan’s great ox, causing the mountains to quake and tremble.
Here was the tip, the swing—if they could be made to swing. Doll’s gun was in his hand, blasting at short range, while his horse ran warily, accommodating its speed to that of the cattle, keeping a jump away from reaching horns, yet close enough to squeal and bite and fight them to the turn.
North was using a bull-whip, a score of feet in length, heavy, savage in his hand. It popped like a pistol as it struck, and it could draw a furrow of blood across the nose of a cow or lift the eye out of a plunging steer. It twisted around a horn and broke it off. Men were yelling, screaming at the top of their voices, the sound swallowed like whispers. It was turn this mass now or be caught and ground beneath it.
But cool-headed experience was superior to wild running. Slowly the leaders were fought to a turn, and as they swung the movement spread to the packed herd behind. They were giving, beginning to mill. If nothing happened, they would miss the wagons.
Now they were turning, like a huge wheel. Bunches, a hundred head, two hundred, split off from sheer savage momentum and diverged, but the turn of the wheel was accelerating. It had been fast and hot—an hour that stretched like eternity and seemed only moments long. That was the way when it happened at all. Fast and hot and deadly, no time to think, to be afraid.
Now the leaders were eating the dust of the drag. The circle was complete. Men stopped screaming, as the wild bellow had ended in the throats of the herd. They spat black mud and wiped at reddened eyes which hardly showed from the crusted mask of dust and sweat. The herd was slowing.
The breath of horses was a hoarse sob. Cattle wheezed as they stumbled. Easy to hold them now, as men were detailed to ride guard. No more danger for a while. Not of that kind. But danger, on the trail, had a habit of striking when least expected, of a kind not counted on. It had been so this time, would be so again.
North was looking the men over, asking questions. With such a big crew it was not easy. But here was something— bone and blood and hide, where a steer had gone down and been tramped to pulp. Only a steer.
But farther on a rider lifted his hand in signal, then waited. What he had found was worse, for it was a man. His horse was not far off, in similar shape.
Only one man. Not a heavy toll, everything considered. But faces were a little grimmer as most of the crew gathered by the creek. Drinking, washing the crust from their faces. One man to bury. One man who had reached journey’s end at its beginning.
North was silent while they washed and drank. The dust was settling now, a brown film everywhere. He worked the long bull-whip in his fingers, smoothing and coiling it. Then he spoke.
“Karth,” step out!”
Karth hesitated, then shuffled forward, his face sullen.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“It was your gun that fired that shot,” North said. “And that shot started the stampede!”
Again Karth hesitated, as if about to make denial. Then he shrugged.
“What of it?” he challenged. “Accidents’ll happen.”
“Yeah, they’ll happen,” North agreed thinly. “But not that kind—not twice. One man is dead because of that. There might have been others. How did it happen?”
Some of the bravado was washed from Karth’s face. He had admitted responsibility, and one man was dead. The look on the faces of the others was grim.
“I was lookin’ at it, and my horse stumbled,” Karth mumbled. “It just went off.”
North’s face was craggy, unpleasant. Doll felt no sympathy for Karth. He knew what was passing in North’s mind, the same suspicion growing to certainty that was in his own. It had been no accident, that shot. He had been close to North at the moment, had heard the wild whine of the bullet. It had been a hasty shot and a wild one, but it had been intended to kill North.
That might be why Garwood had not showed up openly the night before. Easier to keep out of sight, to hire his killing done. Only he had picked a bungler to do the job.
But for the stampede, North would have killed Karth the next instant. Doll was sure of that. But there had been the stampede, a result of the shot unlooked for by Karth. And another man had died.
“I’m going to let you off easier than you deserve,” North said. “Ames, you and a couple of the boys tie him to a wagon wheel. Take his shirt off. You’ve killed a man, and you might have killed others. You’ve lost us a couple hundred head of the herd—maybe more. You’ll take a dozen lashes, Karth, and call yourself lucky.”
They hesitated, but Ames stepped forward; others followed at his gesture. Karth retreated. He stopped with his back to the wagon, face twisting loosely. For a moment it looked as if he would try for his gun, but he was slow with a gun and his eyes were fixed on North, on the inexorable purpose in his face.
They tied him, stripping off his shirt. North lifted the whip, the tip wet and heavy already with the blood of cattle. It writhed out, and a red welt leaped across the white skin of Karth’s back. A scream tore in his throat.
- 17 -
WHETHER that salutary lesson had been a good thing or not Doll was far from sure. He knew that this wasn’t the way he would have handled it, but in these days there was no arguing with North. Always he had been a harsh man intent on his own way. Now he was ruthless.
Emlong, the grizzled little cook who had been with the big herd, was a man who possessed the know-how to dish up a meal and do it out of not much of anything, and still make it filling, almost satisfying. He had smeared grease across the back of Karth. Because he was in no shape to ride a horse, Karth was permitted to ride a chuck wagon and set to assisting Emlong and Sweeney, who had been with the other wagon.
Sweeney was big, slow-moving, slow of speech and thought. There was work enough for all three to feed that crew. Karth was a sick man, and subdued. So was the look on the faces of other men as they looked at him—subdued, speculative.
They had lost half a day, but luck had been with them. They gathered the herd without much loss, divided it and moved ahead. By the end of the second day they were again shaking down to the routine of the trail. One factor was in their favor. This was fall, and most drives headed up out of Texas in late winter or early spring. There would be no other herds to eat their graze or tangle with them.
But if that was in their favor, the winter itself would more than offset it. North was hoping for a mild and open winter. He counted on luck and enough grass along the way to push the herds through. But weather was as unpredictable as his own moods were becoming, and there were signs that the season would be early. The cattle had an unusually heavy coat, if that counted for anything. Old-timers insisted that it did.
There were other signs. Doll noted them, but he kept his own counsel. The tougher the ordeal the better, in his present mood. All that he wanted was hard work, long hours and weariness to the point where his mind could not keep on tormenting him. All of that he would get, he knew, but still he could not forget. He would start awake from a dream, and clench his fists as it dissolved to be only a dream. Altie!
Here was the Colorado, land of scrub oak and hackberry. Rolling country, with plenty of grass. But now the fall rains had started in earnest, and the days were short, the nights long and black. The wind which drove in their faces was raw with the breath of winter. Farther north—in Kansas, and on the far reaches of the Arkansas where they headed—the rain would be snow. If this kept up, it would soon be snow down here as well.
With provender short, the cooks were resorting principally to a stew. Emlong would slaughter a cow or steer, usually one that was lean and gaunt and showed no stamina to keep going. Its meat was lean and stringy, the steaks like whang-leather. Medlow chewed thoughtfully, slicing a chunk off with his bowie, and voiced the common thought.
“I’ve et a lot of vittles in my day—or stuff that passed for such,” he grunted. “And plenty of steaks so tough you wondered was it meat or the sole of your boot with hob nails left in. But when you get gravy that bends the tines of a fork— that’s going some!”
“Anyway, you can’t say it don’t stick to your ribs,” big Sweeney said unsympathetically.
So mostly they made stew, heaping pots of it which was hot and flavorful, and by long boiling the meat could be chewed. Emlong was a genius at adding roots and herbs from along the way, and sometimes the result was good. Mostly the men didn’t complain. There was enough else to gripe about, and when the sun did break through the clouds, on increasingly rare occasions, it seemed to have lost all warmth.
“Usually the air’s alive with gnats an’ bugs this time of year,” Rowe observed reflectively. “Pester you savage. But this time it’s too much for ’em.”
Two things held them together. North, and his driving insistence that they press ahead. That, and the eagerness of most of them to get out of Texas. There could be plenty of trouble in the Nations, and no one had any illusions about all the long miles behind them.
There had been a well-marked trail at the start, a road pounded by countless hoofs where other herds had passed. Now there only was wild country. They were turning gradually west, partly because the grass was better, partly because their destination was different from that of most herds which swung up from Texas. West Kansas, where the Arkansas was young. Farther west than even North had ever gone before.
Doll knew his purpose. If men were ahead of them, waiting—as some assuredly would be—they would figure for them to follow the known trails. There was just a chance, in weather such as this, of fooling them by swinging well to the west.
Or so they had hoped. Until, with the Trinity in sight, riders came into sight behind them—full two score men as they counted, riding steadily. Most of these men wore the blue uniform of the army of the United States. The sun was out again, thin, without warmth. It glinted on rifles held across saddles.
No need to ask what that meant. Only one man in Texas, who was interested in them, would have the influence to send men of the army after them, or the grim purpose to do it. Welch.
Ames and the first herd was on ahead, nearly to the river. But still in sight, a vast brown blotch which crawled over the earth. North had been up there with them. He came back down, rode beside Doll.
“What do you make of it?” he asked.
“Looks like trouble,” Doll said. “It’s the law—such law as they have in Texas these days. And they figure they’ve the force to back it up.”
“Likely,” North agreed. He appeared unworried. “Well, we’ll see!”
Doll looked at him, startled.
“Anything we do, it’ll be wrong,” he warned.
“We’ll see,” said North again.
Doll was puzzled. This was a strange reaction on North’s part. The men in blue were coming up now, led bv a captain. Men who had been traveling light and fast. There was a look about them of men who expected trouble and knew what to do with it.
“Tell the boys to keep on with what they’re doing,” North instructed. “We’ll act as if we didn’t know what this was all about.”
The soldiers pulled to a halt, keeping in formation, at ease but ready for anything. The captain rode forward stiffly.
“I’m looking for a man named North,” he said. “Redding is my name.”
He dismounted, with the stiffness of a man overlong in the saddle. He was short and wide, and walked assertively, coming down hard on the heels. His eye was cold.
“I’m North.” North conceded. “Glad to know you, Captain Redding. What’s on your mind?”
Redding wasted no words.
“We are here as the law,” he said. “We represent, at the moment, the state of Texas.”
He threw that out like a challenge, but North did not pick it up.
“That so?” he asked. “If there’s any information I can give you, I’ll be glad to. But I doubt if we’ll be able to help you. We’ve seen no fugitives along the way.”
“We’re here at the instigation of a man named Welch,” Redding grunted. “That mean anything to you?”
“Welch?” North stroked his chin. “Welch?” he repeated. “Yes, now I remember. There was a man of that name at Longhorn. He and a friend of his tried to kill Mr. Doll and myself. It was an unprovoked attack, and they shot first. Surely such an affair has not brought a detachment of the army way out here?”
“So that’s what happened to the young’un,” Redding shrugged. “No, it’s his father that Γηι referring to. He says that you stole his herd.”
If he felt any apprehension at what might lie ahead, face to face with two crews, both of which would outnumber his own men, he was hiding it under this aggressive cloak of bluntness. But North seemed more puzzled than ever.
“Stole his herd?” he repeated. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”
Redding waved a pudgy hand.
“You’ve got a lot of cattle here,” he pointed out. “And plenty of them, or so he claims, had been gathered by order of Welch. One of his men, as it happens, told how you took them. He lived long enough to give details,” he added drily.
Doll saw the quick gleam in North’s eyes which that incautious revelation drew. So the man who had got away was dead. That meant that there was no witness left alive.
He turned, and saw Karth watching them from the shelter of the nearer wagon. Watching with avid eyes. Doll strolled toward the wagon.
“That’s all most interesting. Captain,” North conceded. “I knew I had enemies in this country. But I didn’t suppose that anyone would go to such lengths to make up a story so ridiculous on the face of it.”
Emlong, within the wagon, glanced at Doll, then shifted his gaze to Karth.
“Get to peelin’ spuds,” he ordered. “He’ll not interfere,” he added to Doll. “I’ll see to that.”
Nodding, Doll strolled back. Redding was teetering back and forth on the balls of his feet.
“Ridiculous, is it?” he demanded. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
North shrugged.
“Opinions don’t cut much ice,” he said bluntly. “Though of course you’re welcome to your own.”
“If you didn’t steal ’em, where’d you get a herd of this size?” Redding demanded. “It looks to be about the size of that bunch that had been gathered for Wrelch. Likewise there’s a lot of brands represented.”
“Naturally there’s a lot of brands,” North agreed. “Show me any big herd in Texas that’s all one brand where they have any. As for the size of it, I’ve got another bunch of equal number, up ahead there. Seven thousand head in all. As to where I got them—where would you suppose? I came to Texas to buy cattle, as I’ve done before. I bought them.”
A faint smile of incredulity crossed the face of the lieutenant who stood behind Redding.
“Bought them, eh?” the captain repeated. “I’d like to see the proof of that—or is that just a matter of opinion, too? You’d have a bill of sale from Colin Welch, maybe?”
Up to now, North had held his temper admirably. Now he grew tough in turn.
“I would not,” he retorted. “Just because Colin Welch may have lost some cattle don’t mean that I’ve got them. From what I’ve heard since I came to Texas, Welch is a damned carpet-bagger, and so I’m not surprised. Probably he’s sold them himself and is tryin’ a double-cross on whoever owned them, savin’ they were stolen so as to get out of paying; for them. It’s about what I’d expect. But I don’t do business with men like Welch.”
Redding scowled.
“Callin’ men like him names won’t get you anywhere,” he warned. “And what I want is proof—”
“I’ll call men like him any name I like, either to you or to their face, if I ever get a chance,” North said flatly. “I don’t like to be called a cattle-thief, and particularly by a man of his stripe. As to proof—I do have a bill of sale. Not from a man such as Welch, but a man who’s known all over Texas. And known as an honest man. Here, take a look. Here’s the bill of sale for seven thousand head.”
He pulled a long red leather purse from his pocket, extracted a folded slip of paper and held it out. Doll recognized it. It was the bill of sale which Jim McLane had given them when North had bought the thousand head from him.
But that had been for a thousand head. Doll looked closer, as Redding unfolded it. He remembered now that North had written that bill of sale in advance. For one thousand head of cattle, at a price of three thousand dollars.
Now he understood why North had been so anxious to buy and pay cash for the thousand head, purchasing them from a a man so well known as Jim McLane, making sure that there was nothing even remotely crooked about the whole deal. He had Jim McLane’s signature on the bill of sale, the sign of an honest man.
