Ralph Compton the Empire Trail, page 19
It did not matter. Very little did as Buchanan dismounted. The one thought that counted: You lived and died like a man. He would miss his family and they would miss him, but that came second at this moment.
Maybe that’ll come after I’m bleedin’ out or my bones get broken. . . .
The unit group of different colored animals and all kinds of riders came nearer, their image rippling a bit from the heat before plowing through. It was a nightmare of faces twisted and possessed with anger, hot skin dusted with sand, and snorting, frothing animals that had been ridden hard. There was so much to fear that Buchanan found himself free of it. He stood as if he were waiting for a coach to pull in.
In the center of the line was St. Jacques. He reminded Buchanan of one the figureheads on his father’s ships, stalwart and upright, immune to the spray of the sea or the assault of the wind. Haywood rode on the east side, at the end of the line. He had been far from St. Jacques during that first encounter, too, when they had tried to buy the cattle. The rancher did not know whether Haywood had been put there or had chosen that spot so he would not be seen holding fire, if it came to that. As ever, Buchanan could not read any emotion on the man’s stone face.
St. Jacques spurred his horse ahead of the others as they neared. The stallion pushed up dirt about ten feet away when the rider reined him to a sharp halt nearby. Buchanan’s own horse started and had to be steadied. The other animal turned one way and then the other as the other riders stopped a horse’s length behind. St. Jacques steadied his mount and looked down at Buchanan. The Double-D foreman was wearing a partial smile, more catlike than human. He had come to play.
“Impressive spot,” St. Jacques drawled. “Glad I got to see it.”
His white wide-brim hat was held to the back of his neck by a leather chin strap. He smoothed the eagle feather in the band, then fixed the hat on his head. He leaned forward casually as though he were courting. “It’s quite a thing you’ve done, getting this far. Haywood told me some of the troubles you faced while you held him in servitude.”
Buchanan made a point of not looking over at Haywood. If the man had used those words, it would be to explain his long absence, to protect himself.
“My offer remains if you care to accept it,” St. Jacques went on. “And honestly, sir, I suggest you do.”
“Or?”
The man straightened and spread his arms to indicate his gang. “Or, sir, like honeybees, we will go around you. Eventually, some member of your party will sign my paper so you get paid. It is fair of Mr. Dawson, I think, being willing to pay for dead cattle.”
“You speak wickedness with the voice of a pastor,” Buchanan said.
“Do I? Sir, I have seen wickedness painted across a great swath of land and people by men like you. No, not like you. You were a part of it.”
“So were most of the men you ride with, I reckon.”
“There are victors and there are losers, and we make what peace we can. Your own man, Reb, has done that, it seems. He fought for the same cause as I, and I hear from Haywood that the man’s belly is no less roiled by what he has been forced to swallow.”
“I hired a man, not a flag. Reb would never do the kind of thing you propose.”
“And I would never call myself ‘Reb.’ That’s a Northern designation, not mine. It suggests loyalty to one’s home, nothing deeper. No, I am an idealist. I repudiate the term ‘Reb’ and I repudiate the one you just used to describe me—‘wickedness.’” St. Jacques’s grin had faded. “This is a business transaction, no less than what Chester Jacob proposed to you. You have a choice to accept profit or to accept loss. Now, we are tired from our long ride, hungry, and ready to cook beef. I ask one more time: Do you accept payment for your stock or not?”
Buchanan looked along the line of men as St. Jacques spoke. He did it only so he could pause on Haywood. As expected, the man sat still as a Sequoia, his eyes unreadable. The rancher did not believe he could expect help or a sudden defection.
The rancher knew that he was cornered. What the Double-D deployed had not been an artful entrapment, just manpower, but it was enough. Buchanan felt regret but no shame in his position. It would be like staying angry at the desert or the ocean. The cattleman had exhausted everything he could do short of a last stand that would surely result in his own demise. And if he drew, his men would hear the gunfire that cut him down. Some, maybe all, would fight. Then they, too, would die.
Yet he still was not decided. Like St. Jacques, he would have to live with surrender, haunted every day.
You can be done with this burden with a word, plant oranges, be with your ladies, said a quiet but insistent voice.
As the rancher resisted accepting either outcome, he felt a soft, barely perceptible change in the ground; it was the smallest vibration, like an earthquake still far off. He felt it before he heard it or saw the cause. It was not even enough to shift the sands beside his feet.
“We are waiting, sir,” St. Jacques said.
Even as the man spoke, there was a stirring up and down the line. Because he was looking at Buchanan, St. Jacques did not initially see it—the cause of the growing thunder in the ground. When he did, his eyes narrowed and twenty guns were raised.
With relief filling his chest like clean, fresh air, Buchanan turned. Behind him was a cloud every bit as big as the one that had brought the Dawson gang to his drive. The pounding of hooves and wall of sand announced the arrival of López and his fellow Juaristas, fighters of the Restored Republic. As the men neared, Buchanan saw Prescott and—God bless him—Reb Mitchell on either side.
The group stopped at roughly the same distance behind Buchanan as the others. López was in the middle. He smiled at Buchanan, who smiled gratefully back. The rancher choked down a swallow as he turned toward the men of the Double-D.
“I was waiting, too,” Buchanan said. “I am not waiting any more. My answer, Mr. St. Jacques, is that I decline your offer.”
Now it was the Southerner’s turn to consider his position. He certainly knew his men; within moments of the party arriving, and without turning, St. Jacques had thrown out both arms to stop his men from taking any rash, individual action. Like Buchanan, the Double-D foreman was dead center in the line of fire.
When St. Jacques was certain that his men were at least briefly in control of themselves, he lowered his arms. He smiled. “I see a few ribbons and sashes that are known to me. How fitting that you are backed by rebels, albeit those who won.”
Buchanan made no response. A few impatient horses snorted. That was answer enough.
“Might I suggest a brief truce?” St. Jacques said. “Perhaps you and I could go off and discuss matters. You still have a long and difficult journey ahead, and the trail is already littered with dead AB cattle.”
“I’d shoot them myself before selling them to you.”
“Ah, the brash impulse speaks. Very well, we will talk here, openly. I suggest you consider reason. Accept payment and everyone in your outfit goes home early, safe, and with a profit. We will be generous: Your Mexican friends get the cattle, which they will use locally. I am sure Mr. Dawson would not object. I have heard you run a somewhat democratic outfit. Why not talk it over?”
“Tell you what, Mr. St. Jacques. I’ll do that.” Without turning, Buchanan shouted, “Reb, what’s your vote?”
Sitting at the eastern end of the line, Mitchell rode forward. He stopped beside Buchanan and looked at St. Jacques. “Only man who gives orders on this drive is Mr. Buchanan. That’s my vote.”
St. Jacques was openly disapproving of the man’s actions. He nodded slowly, then shifted his eyes to Buchanan. “Your final word, sir?”
“The answer is no sale,” Buchanan said.
“Very well. Our dispute is not with your Mexican guests, nor did our instructions anticipate an international incident. But be assured, sir, this matter is not yet ended.”
The man pivoted in a single, rearing maneuver. In that display of horsemanship, Buchanan saw the qualities that he had admired in the enemy and got a small show of the world St. Jacques had lost.
The rancher turned to Mitchell. “Thank you, Reb.”
“I meant what I said, boss—but I confess it was not easy.”
“Because of St. Jacques?”
“Yessir. I didn’t know him but I knew those like him. They were my countrymen.”
“They still are,” Buchanan said.
“Yessir,” he said again, both men aware of the chasm between the two ideas.
Mitchell returned to the herd, taking Prescott with him. Buchanan got back in the saddle and trotted over to López.
“A timely arrival, sí?” the former rebel smiled.
“I’ll never forget this. I hope you will convey that to your compadres.”
“They already know, I think.”
“What do they want? What can I give them?”
“To succeed.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s a great amount,” López said. “I tell them you are trying to feed the people and they asked for nothing more than that. Some men”—he nodded after the retreating St. Jacques—“they fought for ideas. We fought for people. They live in the California foothills to protect our border from men like Dawson, not men like you.”
Buchanan did not know which was the stronger emotion, being surprised or being impressed. In either case, he was overwhelmed by the display of generosity and compassion.
“They would like to ride with us into the lower range, show us water and a path to Mexico that does not include very much sand.”
“That will be greatly appreciated,” Buchanan said to the group.
He took a moment to look at the faces of the revolutionaries. They were weather-worn and scarred, more so than the Double-D men. Yet there was a humanity in their eyes that St. Jacques and his men had lacked. That quality had saved him from loss and humiliation he would have carried for the rest of his days.
As they turned back to the herd, Buchanan glanced over his shoulder. He was looking to see if and when Haywood might cut out from the group. It was probably too early for that, while they were still in view. But he did not doubt it would happen, or that the Dawson gang would resume their pursuit. The rancher was disappointed by the man, even though he was not sure exactly what he had expected him to do.
All Buchanan knew now were two things regarding Haywood. First, that he did not especially wish to see Haywood again. And second, that his wish would likely be denied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Weeks of tranquility helped the men to recover from, if not forget, the ordeals they had faced to that point. There was a lingering sense of pride and good humor—both went hand in hand—due to the repulsing of the Dawson hands. Everyone knew they would have to be dealt with at some point, but it made Deems, if not the others, certain that God was on their side.
The former revolutionaries proved to be excellent and companionable guides for the first three days. To a man they were devout Catholics, and Deems’s prayerful grace before supper was a solemn time for them. They thanked God still for their deliverance from oppression and prayed for the lives of their countrymen and their nation.
The leader of the nineteen-man band was a sixty-three-year-old grandfather known only as León. Only after they had been together for several days did Buchanan learn that the name was more than a name; it was his title: Lion. During the wars, he had used his soldiers shooting from cover as a distraction so he could enter an enemy camp and kill the French with knife and machete.
A stout, balding widower whose family lived on a farm in Veracruz, León was especially fond of the writings of José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, El pensador mexicano, whose ribald poetry he carried in his saddlebag. He could often be heard laughing for no reason, which he explained as suddenly remembering a favorite passage.
“Was he like this during the wars?” Buchanan asked López .
“Always. He would be reciting poetry while we waited in ambush, then continue when the attack was done.”
Buchanan was surprised by this loose confederation. He could not imagine any of his superiors during the war comporting themselves that way.
López translated the stories of their experiences during the war. Unlike the stories of most Civil War veterans, the tales were devoid of the kind of boastfulness the Americans sometimes heard at the taverns and around campfires—usually from people who had to inflate the minor role they played in this skirmish or that reconnaissance. Also, these rebels had won their war. That helped to settle the effects of battle in a way St. Jacques and even Reb Mitchell had not experienced.
The two groups stayed together until the southern end of the Cocopah Mountains, in sight of the towering Black Butte. By heading to that, they would come to the Colorado River. The Mexicans would not accept the gift of several head of cattle. They wanted them all to go to those who needed it.
The drive had been touched with nobility, Buchanan thought. What had started as commerce had developed into something richer. That made him grateful for being able to continue.
When the groups parted, López, Fremont, and Buchanan reviewed the map. The Mexican had made various notes based on what his countrymen had told him.
“We only must avoid the fields of mud volcanoes,” López said as the cattle started down a rocky ridge. “The cones are not very big, maybe as high as a man on horseback, but the mud is hot and the ground is very, very soft.”
“That wasn’t on the damn maps,” Fremont remarked as they prepared to descend from the foothills.
The herd had not lost any animals since the desert, and there were 239 head as they reached the plain. Black Butte was slightly behind them to the northeast, a tower as dark and foreboding as Old Greyback was bright and proud. Buchanan was still in the tail position, behind Griswold. He did not think St. Jacques would risk open pursuit now. The Juaristas might be watching for them.
But Haywood—Buchanan wanted to see him. He wanted to know what the man had actually told St. Jacques.
The day was hot and muggy, and as they proceeded, the men smelled the mud of the volcanoes. The cones themselves appeared after a while, churning out thin plumes of smoke beneath an increasingly cloudy sky. The volcanoes were quite a distance off, over a mile, and the men stayed well clear of them. Even this far away the foul, charred quality of the mud was like an old, open grave, and the ground had a spongy quality. Although the steers did not get stuck they were unable to wander. The men had the least to do here since the drive began.
That changed at sunset.
The men made camp near a southern bank of the Colorado. It humbled Buchanan to think that this was the same river whose banks he crossed in Arizona during the war. He had seen the Mississippi River on his journey west, but only a part of it—not two distant sections.
The sun had gone down and the campfire was burning some yards off to keep predators at bay.
Fremont said, “This is damn nice country. I wonder why nobody’s ranching here?”
López answered, “Someone will, when there is the railroad.”
Suddenly the fire began to hiss and sputter. Moments later, even as the men were throwing off the top of their bedrolls, a warm and then cold wind tore into them from the west and raindrops that felt as heavy as grapes began to pummel them—first from above, then slashing sideways.
The cattle did not seem perturbed, though the instantly ferocious winds frightened the horses. What alarmed the hands was not the storm itself but how close they had settled beside the river.
“I was listenin’ to the waters!” shouted Prescott, who had been on watch. “Wondered why they sounded louder!”
“Storm’s moving west to east, same as the flow!” Buchanan said, his back to the pelting rain. “Will, come with me. Everyone else, stay put till I get some light!”
It was a dark night, and he had to use his toe, carefully set, to feel his way in the dark. Fremont was directly behind him; their destination was the chuck wagon. When they arrived, Griswold was already poking his head from the wagon’s door.
“Now, there’s a blow!” he said. “Horses out back shook me awake!”
“Light a lantern, hand it down!” Buchanan shouted up.
Griswold disappeared behind the curtain and, like a magician, emerged moments later with the lantern.
“At least the heat is gone!” Griswold cheered as he handed the light down. “I’ll light the other in case it goes out!”
“We’ll need it anyway!” the rancher told him.
Buchanan and Fremont ran to the riverbank, where the herd sat. The animals were lowing now but not because of the slashing rain. The men hurried around them. They felt the fresh softness in the grassy bank before the wildly swinging circle of light showed them the height of the fast-flowing Colorado.
“Jee-sus wept!” Fremont said as they looked out at the surging black water.
“Move ’em away,” Buchanan said gravely.
Fremont was already in motion when Buchanan spoke. He was charging back along his own steps toward the camp.
“Get ’em back!” he shouted. “Griz, get the other lantern!”
“I’m comin’,” the cookie shouted not far behind him, the yellow light moving to and fro. He stopped as his cart shook noisily behind him. He hung the lantern from the nearest tree branch. “Sachem, I gotta handle the horses!”
Deems was nearest and Buchanan gave him his lantern before slogging off to get the other. It was knocking against the tree, rain dripping from its sides, and he shielded it as best he could with his arm.
Buchanan went to join the others. He digested the scene fast and whole as he trudged toward his men. The world around him was eerily like a storm at sea, even down to the faint smell of the Pacific blowing in. He refused to believe he had come all this way to meet the same fate as his brother.
