The Big Corral, page 11
But some time since then North had made two slight changes in the paper, minor ones which none the less altered it considerably. The top of the figure one had been crossed, changing it to a seven. A nought had been added after the figure three. Now it read seven thousand head, purchased for a price of thirty thousand dollars.
- 18 -
CAPTAIN REDDING perused the paper carefully. He turned then for a long look at the herds, and shrugged with the weariness of a man who has followed a false lead to a futile conclusion.
“This seems to be in order,” he conceded. “Also I have the honor to be acquainted with Jim McLane. His signature is as distinctive as himself—Light of Mars—and there is no question in my mind but what this is genuine. Sorry to have troubled you, Mr. North.”
“I expect that the trouble has been mostly the other way around,” North suggested, eyeing the tired troopers. “Won’t you and your men spend the night with us and sample our beef stew?”
“You tempt me, sir—tempt me strongly,” Redding confessed. “But I’m afraid we’d better be starting back. A good day to you, Mr. North.”
Laughter boomed deep in North’s throat. A rare mirth, for him. The soldiers were vanishing in the distance, and he waved one hand in mocking salute.
“Tough luck, boys.” he sympathized. “To ride all this way and then find a bill of sale signed by Old Man Texas himself! I suspect that our captain knows there’s something wrong about the deal, but it lets him out, and he wasn’t too anxious for trouble on a carpet-bagger’s account. By the time Jim McLane can be consulted, we’ll be out of Texas.”
That was true, but there was wild land beyond Texas, and neither a river nor a shadowy border-line would hold back vengeance. But North’s gamble had paid off. Once across the Red, they would be beyond law or even the pretense of it.
They crossed the Trinity. It had not been affected by the rains, and there was no trouble. But the cattle were sullen, like the weather. Mile on endless mile they plodded each day while the gray light lasted. Mud and cold and broken sleep at night for the men. Every living creature was ganting up, drawn fine and hard, but drawing already on reserves of fat and stamina.
Moving along as they must, the cattle could not get quite enough to eat. It was the same with the men, for a different reason. There was little enough dry wood for cooking. Seldom did luck go with them to the point of finding enough for a roaring bonfire at which to dry and warm themselves.
Then a quickening beat of excitement. The Red was ahead, a distant gleam in a flash of sunshine. Both were welcome. And, so far, there had been no real trouble.
Maybe they had outguessed their foes. It was a chance, but Doll put no faith in it. If his hunch was right, there’d be trouble waiting at the Red. Vengeance, while they were still in Texas.
But trouble again came from behind. Not in a threatening guise, this time. It was a lone horseman who had followed the trail, a man who rode slumped in the saddle, his face gray as the weather. Doll saw him first, and called North. They watched his approach, puzzled.
“Now what’d an old-timer like him be doing, off by his lonesome at this time of year?” North wondered aloud.
“Maybe that’s Pleasant, catchin’ up with his herd,” Doll suggested.
North gave him a startled look. It was idle speculation on Doll’s part, and no one was more surprised than he when the oldster came up and confirmed it.
“Howdy!” he greeted, and moved stiffly in the saddle. “Ouch!” A strained smile overspread his face. “My name’s Pleasant, but weather like this an’ all, I’m havin’ me a gosh-durned hard time to live up to it!”
It required only a look to see that the man was ill. He should have been in a warm bed with the comforts of civilization around him, instead of riding a winter trail. His turkey looked like an under-fed bird of the same name. Doll glanced at North, and saw the strain on his face. Pleasant, unnoticing, continued cheerfully.
“Reckon it won’t be the effort to do it tonight, at that,” he added. “I’ve been alone, ridin’, ridin’, ridin’ for a right long spell, seems like, and a man gets a hankerin’ for comp’ny. Been travelin’ to ketch up with a bunch of cattle I got somewhere along the trail.”
“In that case, you can rest easy,” North returned. “You’ve found them.”
“Found them? Eh?” Pleasant twisted to gaze with rheumy eyes at the big herd, at the distant blotch of the second bunch up ahead, with the river beyond it. “You mean—?”
“We caught up with your bunch, and now we’re all travelin’ together,” North explained. “We figured it would make it easier, all around. Our route is for my ranch in the western part of Kansas. That’s about where you wanted to go, isn’t it?”
“Why—why yes, I guess mebby’t is.” Surprise held Pleasant speechless for a moment. “I was gettin’ my hopes up when I first saw a herd ahead,” he confessed. “Then I figured I was sure wrong. Too big to be mine. But—that news sure does brighten things up, like’n if the sun was bustin’ through them clouds. B’golly, yes.”
North blew his nose, loudly. His usually craggy face had lost some of its contours.
“My name’s North,” he explained. “And this is Noland Doll. Come along up to the chuck wagons—one of them belongs to you, anyway. We’ll be camping for the night, and you look as if you could use a good feed.”
“Sure can. M’ turkey’s about flat. Mighty glad to meet you, North. An’ you, son. Golly, I can’t get over this. Be a lot nicer, ’s you say, to travel ‘long together this way. Guess I’m gettin’ kinda old. Weather makes m’ old bones creak.”
He was garrulous, a flush of excited color in the gray of his cheeks as they approached the wagons. He dismounted, so stiff that he staggered and all but fell. Doll caught his arm, and he smiled apologetically.
“Guess I ain’t just myself, son,” he sighed. “Kinda had some tough luck, down where I used t’ live. Lost Ma last winter—then other things went wrong. Took the truck out of me when Ma went. We’d aimed to make a new start, up north som’ers, and so I knew Ma’d want me to go on anyway, like we’d planned. Guess I was a mite late, gettin’ started.”
The news was spreading as the cowboys came in for chuck. For the most part they were silent and grim. They knew the story of this herd, and by now they knew North, or thought they did. Doll caught a muttered growl or so.
“Me, I can go for a lot. But this sticks in my craw. If the boss was to kill the old geezer at the start, it wouldn’t be so bad as playin’ with him this way! I sure as hell don’t like it.”
To their surprise, as well as Doll’s. North himself materialized out of the shadows. His voice was edged.
“Reckon mebby I’ve got that comin’,” he acknowledged. “But you’re draggin’ your loop too wide when you think I’m playin’ with the old man. His herd belongs to him—and all the range he needs to run them on, when we get there! I didn’t know he wasn’t another Welch!”
They stared at him, astonished at this new revelation, as North moved away again. Doll felt warmed. Hard, North might be and was, a man to fit his environment, without scruple. But he had his points. Pleasant could ride in the chuck wagon now, and sleep in peace.
With the morning it was apparent that he would have to travel in that fashion for a while. He had kept going on sheer nerve, but now that the necessity for it was past, the let-down was marked. Pleasant was a sick man. He protested at being babied, insisted that he should ride with the rest of them, but subsided when North insisted that he not only ride in his own wagon, but that he stay in bed for a day or so as they journeyed.
Emlong, at North’s suggestion, gathered sage and other herbs and mixed a potent brew with which to dose the sick man. Doll sniffed it as it boiled and shook his head.
“That stuff ought to kill or cure,” he said. “It’s make me sick just to take it.”
“I’ve brung more’n one feller onto his feet with that tea,” Emlong insisted. “Ain’t nothin’ bad about it but the taste. It’s a mite on the strong side, I’ll admit. But I’ve took it myself.”
North was moody and silent. They rode ahead to join the lead bunch as they neared the river. Luck was with them. This was low water season, and though they had traveled by guess in a trailless land, a good crossing lay ahead. One unmarked by any tracks of man or beast.
“We’ll bring both bunches up close and cross in the morning,” North decided. “What do you think of it?”
Doll shook his head.
“I don’t like it,” he confessed. “I doubt if Welch would put all his trust in the army. And then there’s Garwood. who’s never made a move—yet. And this is the edge of Texas.”
“That’s the way I feel,” North agreed. “It looks too good. You and me will take us a ride—after dark.”
Doll knew what he had in mind. If Pleasant could find them, so might others. This was the Red. If they were to be stopped at all, here was the place. Absence of any sign was more suspicious now than mark of it would have been.
There was no moon. Clouds had spread in a creeping haze as the dark closed down. They rode upstream for a couple of miles, their horses picking their way in the heavy gloom. It would rain again before morning, and the prospects were not cheerful. Back at camp there was fresh grumbling. Muted protests which would swell to a growl as the miles dragged out behind.
Unable to see more than the dark sheen of the water, they had to chance it when they turned to cross. Luck did not favor them, for almost at once the horses were swimming. The bite of the water was savage with winter. Doll clenched his teeth and took it as icy waves lapped high. They reached the far shore and the horses struggled out, shaking themselves. Here they could only ride in silence. The cayuses could keep their blood astir by moving, but even that was denied them.
Here were bluffs, broken country which would afford plenty of hiding places—and excellent opportunity for an ambush as the herd started across. Maybe nothing like that was waiting. But the lack of it would surprise Doll more than the presence.
The wind was blowing, and it cut through sodden clothes as spear-tipped horn would rip. Nothing showed in the gloom. They swung and quartered back from the river, and both men were beginning to wonder if they had been wrong, when they saw a gleam like a low-hung star. But the clouds had long since blotted away all stars.
“Campfire,” North said. “You go have a look. It’ll give you a chance to stir around.”
One of them had to stay with the horses. Doll worked closer, on foot. The ground was frozen under his feet, no longer spongy. Even the exercise could not warm him. Then the fire showed bright as he looked down at it, envious of its heat. Men lolled about, or lay rolled in blankets beyond. Many men.
“Better get some sleep, I guess,” one of those by the fire yawned. “They’ll be startin’ to cross, come daylight, and we’ve got to be ready for them.”
“How many do you figure?” another man inquired.
“Close to a hundred, I’d say. But we’ve got forty, and that’s plenty. Wait till they’re in the middle of the river, then start pickin’ ’em off, get the herd to milling. By the second volley the odds’ll favor us.”
“I’d take them on if it was ten to one,” a third man growled. “That herd’ll never leave Texas—not while they drive them!”
Doll had heard enough. Forty men, set to ambush them as they came. Their hunch had been right. He returned to where North waited, and they crossed back to the Texas shore and a few hours of sleep. But long before daylight Doll was in the saddle again, this time with thirty men behind him.
“I’ll stick with the cattle,” North explained. “We’ll have to start across as they expect. Wait till they start something —then wipe them out!”
I was to be what the others planned, but in reverse. An ambush for the ‘bushers. Those who planned to sow the wind would reap a bitter hurricane.
- 19 -
SOUND FLOWED above the uneasy suck and gurgle of the river—a swelling turbulence which denoted that the big herds were being pushed into the muddying edge of the Red. Doll, straining his eyes in the half-light of dawn, could see the dim mass of them a mile away. He felt the water in his boots, cold as ice. Pulsing blood seemed to have no power to warm the white flesh at a man’s extremities. It was bad now, it would be worse as winter closed about them. Meanwhile there was work to do.
Half a mile back from the water they found their enemies’ remuda, with two men guarding the cayuses. Men who looked impatiently toward the south, ears cocked for the first sound of the guns. Resentful men who wanted to be in at the fight, who had no inkling that trouble would come this far to seek them.
One turned to stare into the round bore of a revolver close to his eyes. His hands jerked like the beating wings of a captive hawk. The other man was of sterner stuff. His eyes widened, and then he was trying for his gun, starting to throw himself down behind the shelter of a boulder. Doll swept his horse alongside, his own revolver chopped down in a ham-merstroke. Shapeless hat and unkempt thatch of hair dulled the thud of it, but the running man stumbled and sank to his knees, and the half drawn gun slid and made a little furrow in the sand.
“Take their guns,” Doll ordered his men. “That’s enough. If they want to run, let them. Texas is big.”
He set two men in turn to watch the horses, hazing them to a new hiding place. Then he led the way, coming up from behind to where a line of watchers would be crouched. Doll dismounted, and the others followed his example, not waiting to be told. Each man knew his job, without the need of words.
They moved on foot, the river again in sight, a dull gray sheen in the dawn. One man blew softly on numbed fingers. There was a dank mist rising from the water, a chill wind beginning another day. The hot coffee they had swallowed an hour before was only a memory. There was no warmth anywhere, even deep inside a man.
Doll had already picked the most likely spot for the ambush. A long, low ridge, running a litle distance back from the river and parallel with it, an embankment from which guns could rake the crossing herd and those who came with it. A place made to order for massacre.
He saw the back of a crouching man, and another beyond him. The herd was a formless wedge in the half-light, crowding deep into the river. Light glinted along raised gun barrels. Doll lifted his own revolver and fired a quick shot over the heads of the men on the ridge.
A rifle went off like an echo. Probably it was a nervous finger on the trigger, acting in gesture purely involuntary. But it was enough to make nerves jump, to swing the line of them around with guns raising.
Doll had hoped to do this without a battle, to warn this bunch and disarm them. That wouldn’t please North, who had ordered that they be wiped out. But Doll had been thinking of Altie. Altie, with flame in her hair, and an unexpected tenderness of heart. He felt that she would approve his way.
Now there was no time for thinking. Only it wasn’t going to work like that.
A man beside him coughed and slumped to the ground. Red flamed from gun muzzles, and it was folly to stand up and shoot back, but he was running as he had done in the old war days, shouting, leading his men. They had called him Major Doll then. Before that charge the line ahead wavered and broke.
Most of them. Not all. A big man was standing there, like a deep-rooted tree, feet wide apart, brushing the hair back from his eyes with impatient gesture. There was something familiar about him, and suddenly Doll knew what it was. It seemed to transport him back to that saloon called the Paddle Wheel, so that he was facing Colin Welch again.
Only this was an older man, and there was vague regret in him that it had to be this way. He shot from the hip, and felt the twitch of the other man’s bullet through his hat, saw a lock of hair sheared off. His own hair. That had been close.
But Welch was down, and his men were retreating, shooting as they could, dodging for cover. Unable to return to their horses, realizing belatedly that they could not reach them again. The knowledge that they were being squeezed between the closing jaws of a trap made them more deadly. They fought back doggedly, and finally a score of them reached the river and plunged in. Some of them would get across to hide in the brush and brakes along the Texas shore.
Doll left the harrying of them to others. He was suddenly sick of it all, and whatever happened, this particular crew would bother them no more. Those who survived the river and the man-hunt would be fully occupied with the effort to keep alive, to get back to food and shelter, stumbling along on foot, with winter pressing them hard.
But maybe they were lucky. They were heading south, not north into the teeth of winter. North’s crew should have been jubilant in the face of so easy and complete a victory. Instead, they paused to dig a few graves, then went on again with storm beating in their faces. Rain, driving pellets with the wind behind it, was soaking them anew as day came, fulfilling the grim promise of the night.
The cattle were restive. They strove constantly to get off by themselves, singly or in bunches, to stop and stand while the others drifted past. They would get worse as the trail lengthened. Instead of following, the riders must harry them, constantly watchful. Most of the danger of stampede, always present by spring and summer, was gone in this weather. But these conditions were worse. The one good thing about it was that it kept men occupied, and effort helped warm sluggish blood.
Pleasant still rode in his own chuck wagon. He lay swathed in blankets, dutifully drinking the bitter concoction which Emlong served up, protesting that he should be riding with the others, doing his share of the work. But his protests were feeble. He was a sick man, scarcely able to raise his head.
“No wonder North didn’t battle him,” Karth grunted. “He could see, plain enough, that Pleasant’d never live long. If there’d been a chance he could, it’d have been a different story.”
