Ralph Compton the Empire Trail, page 21
“Hush,” Buchanan said as he scanned the notes he had made in San Bernardino. He looked them over and fastened his eyes on one of the entries. His pockets all being wet, he slipped the papers between his lips. Buchanan unfolded the map and angled it under the lantern. After studying it for several moments, he muttered, “I’ll be damned.”
“What’s wrong? We goin’ the wrong way?” Griswold asked.
“Quiet,” Buchanan said again as he looked at one of the markings he had made. Without looking up, he asked, “Miguel, you awake?”
The Mexican groaned, raised himself on an elbow. “I have been up ever since you got here and Griz had someone to hear his fresh mierda.”
Griswold huffed. “I don’t know what that means but I don’t like the tone.”
Buchanan ignored the cookie. He stepped closer to López and spoke softly; he did not want Haywood to hear.
“Miguel, Santa Rosalía de Camargo,” he said. “Traqueros travel between there and Chihuahua with railroad supplies. From Chihuahua they are building north to Texas.”
“Señor Buchanan, forgive me, that is all new. I have not seen any of it.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. Chihuahua is what I’m interested in. Looks to me like it’s half the distance from here to Hidalgo.”
“It’s closer, about as far as we have traveled so far. I fought there once. Maybe someone still knows me.”
Buchanan felt his spirits rise. “The terrain?”
“Plains and hills,” he replied. “A number of villages, farms.”
“Thanks. Sorry to have woke you.”
“De nada,” López replied, even as he was falling back to sleep.
“Is that where we’re going?” Griswold asked. “Gotta know account o’ water, rations.”
“You know what? Go to sleep,” Buchanan said, and walked over to the cookie. “Say nothing of this.”
“Okay, okay. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
Griswold continued to mumble about his silence as he checked the drying clothes. Buchanan returned to his horse to consider the plan that was forming in his mind . . . and what it would take to carry it out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There were no birds to rouse the men before sunup. Any that lived there had gone to their nests during the rain and stayed there. Whatever four-footed plains dwellers lived there found puddles of water nearer to their abodes. Pooled rain was everywhere.
Some men woke with the sun, others with the sudden change brought by the returning warmth after the storm-chilled night. Except for the four dead steers lying this way and that along the sloppy banks of the receding river, there was a freshness to the surroundings that felt like a fresh start. The cleanliness faded quickly as buzzards began to descend on the carcasses, followed by shrikes. Soon the four carcasses were covered with feathers, the rank smell and sounds of birds rising above the rush of the river.
The men looked away as they dressed with clothes that were stiff but dry. Griswold had left the garments on the long stick; there had been no need to watch them, as the fire had subsided. The cookie had been up before any of them and to every man the smell of his butchered beef frying was a powerful reason to greet the day.
Fremont was wobbly at first but got his footing quickly. Buchanan had napped a little; mostly, though, he was up considering the route forward. He still had his map, his notes, and his journal. He wished he had asked to take the map book Miss Sally had shown him. He had not noted places he had not expected to be going. There was a dot for Chihuahua because it was a large town and gave him a sense of scale, but he had noted nothing else between it and Hidalgo.
“You all right?” Buchanan asked his trail boss when they met at the chuck wagon. The men were silent, still recovering from their shared ordeal.
“I will be in the saddle and the horse does the walkin’,” he said. “Fightin’ water ain’t something my muscles was used to.”
“Come with me,” Buchanan said, looking around. “Miguel?”
The Mexican already had his biscuit with a thin slice of meat tucked between the halves. He walked over. The three men were clustered far from Haywood, who had made his own small camp with his clothes drying. He was washing a ways downriver.
“Fremont, I don’t know if Haywood is staying—I expect not—but you tell this to the men one at a time.”
The trail boss nodded as Buchanan shifted the papers so the open map was on top.
“We are going to Chihuahua instead of Hidalgo,” he said, pointing to his pencil dots. “I believe that Mr. Haywood was sent to make us think St. Jacques is in pursuit.” Buchanan used his finger to trace a line slightly north—the direction the Dawson gang was last seen going—then turned abruptly south along the western side of Big Salt Creek. “He can travel faster’n us, catch up by tomorrow. I reckon the storm woulda slowed them some, but I suspect he kept going north, around the top of the Salt Creek, then down the eastern side.”
“Why would he do that?” Fremont asked.
“Simplest reason of all: We won’t be expecting it. St. Jacques covers ground, takes up positions, picks off the cattle as we come through.”
“Boss, do they even know where we’re headed?” Fremont asked.
“I mentioned it to Chester Jacob; maybe he let it fall. I have to assume they know. In fact, I hope they do.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re not going there. We’re gonna sell as much beef as we can directly to the rail bosses in Chihuahua. That was where Hidalgo intended to move most of it.”
While he spoke, Buchanan traced out the new course on his map, drawing features from memory.
“Way I see it, St. Jacques is gonna cross the Gila River south of the Salt Creek and stay east of the Sierra Madre mountains, thinking to hop from water to water—Lakes Guzmán, Santa María, Los Patos, as I recollect. That’ll let him keep the horses fresh. Then either he goes south along the Rio Grande and follows the Gulf of Mexico coastline or else waits for us to come along.”
“Señor, that is a lot of territory.”
“And he’s got a lot of men, more than he needs. He may fan ’em out to the west, watching for us. Only we won’t be passing anywhere near because we’ll have cut off sooner than he was expecting.”
“Let me have this, please,” López said, reaching for the pencil. He made a small circle. “Somewhere here is the town of Arizpe. I fought there once. To the east”—he drew a line—“is a cut through the Sierra Madre mountains. It is not easy terrain I believe, but I think we can cross it.”
“Cross mountains?” Fremont said.
“No—there are a number of valleys. I have not been there, but they were on our own maps during the revolution.”
Buchanan was trying to compute the distance. “That’d be about seventy, eighty miles?”
“Sí, about that.”
“Very good. Fremont, that’s where we’re going.”
The three men looked at the crude map before Buchanan folded it away.
“What if St. Jacques doesn’t know we were intendin’ to go to Hidalgo?” Fremont asked. “Jacob might not’ve said. The Dawsons could just as easily figger wrong that we’d head to the Gulf o’ California, sell some cattle, and mebbe ship what’s left south.”
“My father was a fisherman in Guaymas,” López said. “A drive might make that its destination.”
“I talked by telegraphy to someone about going there. They can’t take more than a dozen or so head. Dawson surely knows that.”
“If that’s the situation,” Fremont said, “then he has to be behind us. He’ll catch us for sure. Thing he won’t know is how far the Juaristas did or didn’t come with us.”
“Unless Haywood tells him,” López said.
“Yeah,” Fremont said. “Dammit, that could happen.”
“That’s right,” Buchanan said. “Haywood could do that. Haywood should do that. He works for the man. But I don’t think he will.”
Fremont was thoughtful. He looked over to where Haywood was just finishing up by the river. “Man saved my life. I owe him. But, boss, we got a job. We got our men to look after. The tracker can hurt us.”
López said, “I say we keep him with us. At least we don’t kill him.”
“We’re not gonna do anything,” Buchanan said.
Fremont’s expression went from uncertain to certain. “We can’t just let him ride out.”
“That’s exactly what we’re gonna do. Long as he doesn’t know our plan, he can’t harm us.”
López shrugged, nodded, and walked away. Fremont just shook his head.
“I’m not gonna stand here and tell you you’re wrong,” Buchanan told him. “But I thought about it during the night and there’s nothing else I can do.”
“Night isn’t the best time for thinkin’,” Fremont said. “I tried it. Yer worn-out and the world looks strange.”
“That may be,” Buchanan agreed with a smile. On their wedding night, Patsy told her husband that it had to be nighttime when the snake tricked Eve to taste the apple and Eve convinced Adam. “My mind is like a longcase clock winding down,” she had said.
“You stopped him back at the Mohave,” Fremont pressed.
“That was different. I trust him, even when I don’t.”
“I’m not sure I follow that, boss—”
“Not sure I do either,” Buchanan laughed.
“—but you know I’m with ya.”
“I know, and I value it.
The men regarded each other a moment before Fremont walked off. What the rancher had meant was about more than just Haywood. Going to Hidalgo was impossible, but there was no guarantee that the railroad office in Chihuahua would accept his herd or have the money to pay for it.
I’ll risk that but won’t take Dawson’s money, he thought as he put his papers away. What was it Jacob had said about me not that long ago? That I was a stubborn man without a head for business. . . .
The shipping agent was possibly right about that much, at least.
Buchanan helped Griswold fix the four horses to the chuck wagon.
“Sachem, you know what I ate this mornin’?”
“From the smell, I’d say one of Jacob’s oranges.”
“That’s right. Strings caught in my teeth, the ones that’s left, but it wasn’t bad. I’m thinkin’ maybe I’d like to set aside some land when we get back, grow some of ’em.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Buchanan said.
Griswold seemed pleased and he climbed into the seat with a bounce in his boots. That was not something he heard often.
The rancher rode out with him to help with the final preparations to resume the drive. He believed that the country ahead was like the country behind, flat and dusty prairie. He knew there was water throughout the region. It was not that he remembered that specifically, but if it had been otherwise, he would have noted it on his map.
As the drive set out in its stages, with the lead steer moving and the others following in fits, Buchanan walked toward his horse. The rancher was not surprised to see the animal alone at the tree, Haywood having mounted up and ridden off. With the ground still damp, there were only a few hoofprints to mark his departure north. The hills concealed man and horse and there was no cloud of dust to indicate whether he had gone straight or headed northeast.
“Did you go to where you left St. Jacques or to where you suspect he might’ve gone?” Buchanan wondered aloud.
He did not want to believe that Haywood had lied, that he knew for certain St. Jacques intended to cut southeast and was riding to let him know the position of the drive.
The morning was a slog through the damp earth, but the trail became more welcoming as the sun rose. The grasses were plentiful and the men had to urge the cattle along to keep them from feeding. Like the cowhands, they had expended a lot of energy the previous night.
The weather was warm and then hot, just like the day before. Buchanan watched the skies, relieved that they were cloudless. After what had been squeezed from them the night before, he was not surprised.
The drive left the Colorado behind after noon, where the river turned eastward. The cattle grazed and watered there for less than an hour and then were moved on, due south to where López said Arizpe should lay. During the sojourn Buchanan had doubled back to scan the northern horizon with his spyglass. He was searching for any sign of St. Jacques and his men but saw nothing.
There are too many ifs and maybes, Buchanan thought.
If the gang was coming this way, and if Haywood had told them there were no longer any rebels with the drive, then they could charge ahead and be on the AB men as early as the next morning. That assumed Haywood had ridden hard to the north, the gang did the same to the south, and they had already met.
If. Maybe.
That was why considering things at night was better. A woman’s heart and a man’s gut spoke clear then, pushing aside their fuzzy brains.
* * *
* * *
It was a little over three days before the town of Arizpe appeared on the southern horizon. At some point, without a mark or village to announce it, the drive had crossed into Mexico. A passage that should have made Buchanan feel safe had just the opposite effect. He had never been in another country. and the United States he loved and had served suddenly seemed not just far away but unreachable.
Arizpe was situated below the mountains, near enough for sheep to graze in the foothills. The pass was barely visible due to the angle of the afternoon sun and would be too dark to enter well before nightfall. Buchanan rode from the tail to the head of the herd to tell Fremont that it would be best to wait until morning before attempting to enter.
As they approached, the first structure to become clear to them was the rust-colored tower of the Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Arizpe. Like many churches throughout the American Southwest and Mexico, the mission was over a century old and the town had grown both around it and because of it. Buchanan felt some peace when he saw it; although the colors were different than the ivory bell tower and stark walls of the Mission San Luis Rey, Nuestra Señora de la Asunción reminded him of the first time he set eyes on his future wife.
The town turned out to see the unexpected sight. The women stood in a row waving colorful blankets. The men were behind them, some armed with old rifles that, Buchanan suspected, had not been used for years and quite possibly would not fire at all.
To the west, excited children had to be held back by the older men—in some instances forcibly—from running to the herd. They contented themselves with cheering and waving sticks. The children were only accustomed, if at all, to having in their midst a few milk cows and a bull and maybe some calves. They had never seen anything like a herd of longhorns growing in size and sound as it emerged from the plain. Nor would they have any idea what it meant, other than spectacle—like an army moving through or horses being rounded up.
An elder rode out on a burro as the drive came nearer. Watching him were eight men, all in old, worn uniforms, each with a rifle. Fremont had the animals stop while López rode out to greet the man. The cowboy threw away the cigarette he had been smoking; during the revolution it had become a sign of casual disrespect to ladies, suggesting a ruffian and not a caballero.
The man was dressed in white cotton trousers with a red serape and black and gold sombrero. His hair and beard were gray and long. Both men showed one other cortesía as they approached. López dismounted and bowed as he led his horse over. The older man inclined his head as a show of courtesy.
“We are sorry to disturb your tranquil morning, but the cattle—they have their own time for things,” López said with a smile.
“You are welcome anytime, along with your cattle,” the man replied. “I am Alcalde Nicolás Barragán—a term larger than this man and his duties, I admit.”
“Don Barragán de Arizpe, I thank you for your greeting.” He looked beyond him at the ragtag band behind him. “And may I assure you, the guadias are not needed.
“They like to do this,” the alcalde said with a wink.
That was likely true, López thought. It was also true that every stranger who came to any town was not trusted—until he was.
The village leader eyed him carefully. “You were a part of the revolución. I see this fire still in your eyes.”
“Sí,” López answered. This was always a moment of truth during the revolution, when a man like the alcalde would welcome them back in the dark or drive them away with a warning never to return. It was an unexpectedly emotional moment for López, whose survival had, for years, depended in large part on the fearless generosity of patriots like this man.
“We can offer you water and a bit of food, but not more, I am afraid,” the older man said. “Bring the cattle to the eastern side of the village, where you may also make camp. There is feed at our corral. You may leave your horses there.”
López replied with relief and emotion, “We want nothing except to cause as little disruption as possible.”
“It is too late for that,” the alcalde chuckled, pointing a thumb at the forty or so children. They were a roiling mass well behind him.
López informed Buchanan of the invitation, which he gratefully accepted. The herd was relocated, the children following at a distance. When the herd was settled, López invited the children to come closer provided they stay behind the cowhands. Many of the youthful crowd were as excited to see American cowboys, the boys imitating how they stood, walked, and threw a rope to keep the steer from wandering.
After discussing it with the men, Buchanan ordered one of the leaner head butchered and a meal prepared for the village. There was a large and celebratory dinner, richer to the villagers for being unexpected. Even Griswold was relaxed. The extra work was a bother, and he said so many times. But the widowed señora who ran the kitchen at the local taberna was very much to his liking. He was delighted, after the grand supper, when she asked to see his chuck wagon.
