The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  MOST DAYS, BILL Pickering enjoyed working for Mr. Dixon, even when that work was arduous. This morning, though, he couldn’t make that claim.

  He hated running out on Dixon and the herd when they were three men down already, with the best part of a month’s journey still left to go before they reached St. Louis.

  If they ever reached that city with its stockyard, paymaster, and slaughterhouses.

  Mr. D, in Pickering’s opinion, needed him now more than ever, but he understood the order he’d received and was determined to obey it, whether he agreed with it or not. Sometimes he dared to offer unsolicited advice on some idea of Dixon’s, but not this time.

  His mission on this early morning was twofold.

  Reclaim the stolen cattle if he could accomplish that, of course. But even if he couldn’t manage to retrieve them fit for travel and eventual auction, he had to punish those who’d stolen them and killed off two of Mr. Dixon’s drovers in the process.

  That meant killing work, and since he’d missed the Willow Grove action—another order that he’d disagreed with but obeyed—there was no skipping out on this assignment.

  Absolutely none.

  Given his choice of hands to ride with him, he’d called on Whit Melville for sheer imposing size and Toby Bishop for the skill he’d shown at putting gunmen down. Bishop had slain two of the rustlers from the first gang that attacked their herd, and there was nothing to suggest he’d lost his touch for it during the interim between attacks.

  This time it looked like Comanches, but once a fellow’s mind was set on killing . . . well, what difference did that make?

  Between them they were packing three good rifles, three six-guns, and ample ammo for the job at hand, unless the raiders they were seeking led them to a village full of warriors spoiling for a fight.

  It didn’t feel that way to Pickering, but he’d been wrong enough times in the past to keep his fingers crossed for luck.

  They left before the funerals in camp, Pickering mounted on a sorrel mare, Whit Melville on his pinto, Bishop on his snowflake Appaloosa stallion. Picking up the raiders’ trail from last night didn’t take a genius with a magnifying glass, and they were making good time, only slowing when they came in sight of hills, a stand of trees, or something else that struck them as a likely ambush site.

  Two hours into the pursuit, none of those apprehensive moments had panned out, and Mr. D’s order came back to Pickering. A day or two at most, then give it up and they would eat the loss.

  Meaning that Mr. Dixon would be eating it, another slice out of his profits when they hadn’t come within two hundred and eighty–odd miles of their final destination yet.

  And three men down, he thought. Don’t be forgetting them.

  As if he could.

  Ranching was risky at the best of times in Indian country, the same for trail drives moving interstate, where anything could happen, and it often did. They’d seen a fair bit of that anything so far, starting with April snow, then rustlers, now the raiding party. Starting off with thirteen hands, not counting Varney and his helper, they were down almost one-quarter of their workforce, with half of the journey still ahead.

  It was the worst drive Pickering had served on yet, for sheer attrition, and he never hoped to see its like again.

  But it was time to put such thoughts behind him, focus on the bloody errand he had been assigned. And if he lived through that, there would be time to think about tomorrow down the road.

  * * *

  * * *

  TALL TREE ORDERED a rest stop at midmorning, with the sun three hands above the western skyline, climbing in a clear blue sky. The others did not argue with him, though he caught Iron Jacket cutting sidelong glances toward him when he thought Tall Tree was unaware.

  He had no doubt that Iron Jacket expected trouble from him, coming soon. For now, it pleased Tall Tree to make the traitor sweat, trying to guess when retribution for his backbiting and scheming would descend upon him.

  Soon enough. But not just yet.

  Tall Tree required his full band to transport the longhorns they had liberated from the white man’s herd last night, killing at least one cowboy in the process. An attack of that nature invited hot pursuit, no doubt in progress even as his men dismounted, drinking from their waterskins and chewing pemmican, eyes watchful on all sides.

  Tall Tree was not aware of any settlements nearby, where hired hands from the cattle drive could log complaints of the attack they’d suffered or solicit help from other whites in tracking down their stolen steers. Law on the prairie, even in Missouri, was whatever men with weapons had the will and power to impose.

  And if pursuers overtook his war party, it would mean war.

  Which bothered Tall Tree not at all.

  He had not counted coup on any adversaries yet this year, a task requiring physical contact, often without inflicting lethal injury. It was a show of bravery, quite different from firing arrows or bullets from a distance that precluded using knives, war clubs, or tomahawks. Each close approach from which a warrior managed to emerge unscathed enhanced his personal prestige, while being wounded was a strike against him.

  The reward for counting coup—an eagle’s feather—marked him as a man.

  The single feather plaited into Tall Tree’s hair commemorated an event from eight months earlier. It was high time, he realized, to prove himself again.

  Perhaps against Iron Jacket, who planned to take his life.

  He glanced across at Someone Found and caught the warrior watching him, one eyebrow slightly raised as if asking a silent question. Tall Tree moved his head the barest inch from side to side, a negative response, but only for the moment.

  He could not afford a personal diversion at this moment, with white hunters likely searching for them. When the time came for a reckoning with Iron Jacket, Tall Tree wanted time to do it properly and relish the event.

  Judging that they had rested long enough, he called for the remainder of his war party to mount their bareback ponies and resume their southward journey. Moving ever closer to the territory where their captive people dwelt in poverty on barren land selected for them by the Great White Father in the East, they could consider options for disposal of the captured steers.

  Tall Tree had not decided yet if they should feed the reservation’s hungry souls or seek a monetary profit from the mini herd. One path would win them goodwill and perhaps a few recruits. The other meant cash for more sophisticated weapons, useful in the wider war Tall Tree had planned.

  But there was no need to decide right now.

  Particularly when they might be fighting for their lives before the sun went down.

  * * *

  * * *

  TOBY BISHOP HADN’T asked to join the hunting party, but he’d offered no resistance to it either. It was clear he’d been selected because of the fight at Willow Grove, and because he had mentioned to Pickering that he had played a part in Mason County’s Hoodoo War.

  So be it. That was what a man could logically expect when he had shot folks in the past and made no bones about it.

  Do it once, twice, even three or more times, and you were the fellow people turned to when they had to cope with dirty work.

  The sad part, he supposed, was that he didn’t mind so much, making him wonder if the kind and caring part of him was being chipped away.

  Or did he ever have one to begin with?

  Melville, riding beside him on the pinto, asked Bishop, “What are your thoughts on this deal, Toby? Meaning what should we expect?”

  “Can’t rightly answer that,” Bishop replied. “No way of telling what we’ll find if we catch up with the raiders we’re chasing.”

  “Oh, we’ll catch them right enough,” Bill Pickering chipped in. “I gave my word to Mr. D.”

  And Mr. D had given them a deadline, but there was n
o point in a reminder to their foreman for the sake of argument.

  “Take that for granted, Mr. Pickering,” said Melville. “If we find ’em, put ’em down and all, that leaves a whole new job soon as the shooting’s done. How long you reckon it’ll take to overtake the herd again?”

  Pickering shot an irritated glance at Whit and said, “No point in worrying about that now. Let’s take it one step at a time, all right?”

  “Yes, sir. No problem.”

  “Great. Let’s get a move on, if you don’t mind.”

  Melville glanced over at Bishop, shrugging with a wounded what ’n hell did I say? look on his tanned face. Toby could only answer with his own shrug and face forward, concentrating on the trail they had been following since dawn.

  He knew their job was going to be tough enough without breeding a quarrel among themselves. A chase, perhaps protracted, almost certainly concluding with a gunfight, was enough to think about just now.

  If they were hunting six or seven braves, that meant they were outnumbered two to one at least. If those raiders were headed for a larger village, you could multiply those odds until they made the score at Little Big Horn seem evenly matched.

  And there was something else to ponder, if the raiders ran across other white men who disposed of them, then felt like hanging on to Mr. Dixon’s longhorns for themselves. That took the problem to another level altogether, and he didn’t even want to think about where it might lead.

  * * *

  * * *

  GAVIN DIXON WATCHED the final shovelful of dirt tossed onto Boone Hightower’s grave and tamped down with the shovel’s blade. As when they’d buried Graham Lott, no markers stood above the mounds of soil where two more drovers had been laid to rest.

  Instead of trying to quote Scripture now, Dixon simply declared, “These fellas weren’t expecting to meet death out here, but it’s a chance we all took, starting off the drive. We’ve still got far to go, and friends in peril elsewhere, as they try to put things right. Won’t help these men, but if they had a voice, I reckon they’d tell us to get the herd moving.”

  Somebody said, “Amen,” as if he’d led them in a prayer, but Dixon didn’t try to pick out who it was. He settled for “Mount up. The day’s going to waste.”

  His drovers had recovered all the straying longhorns they could find. A quick head count told Dixon there were nineteen hundred and seventy remaining, and he didn’t bother double-checking it. If strictly accurate, that meant the raiders had escaped with twenty-seven steers, and he still hoped to get most of those back if Pickering and his two backup guns were lucky, but it wasn’t something he could count on.

  Profits dropped with every steer they lost along the way, but if they held the line with what they’d managed to preserve, the coming auction in St. Louis should still put him in the black for this season.

  Next year, too far away for anyone to contemplate from where they stood right now, would have to take care of itself.

  Dixon mounted his brindle mare and watched the drovers as they got the longhorns in formation, heading off to the northeast. A cursory examination showed no injured steers, though some were off their feed a bit after the wild night they’d endured.

  No great surprise, and they could make that up over the weeks to come if they were spared any further incidents along the way.

  Mel Varney put the chuck wagon in line behind the marching herd, no rising dust to speak of while they were traversing grassy plains. Dixon came last, watching for any strays drifting to east or west, prepared to intercede himself since they were down six hands this morning.

  That put his thoughts in motion, soaring off southward toward Pickering, Bishop, and Melville, making tracks in hot pursuit of that war party that had struck them overnight. Dixon had no animosity toward any tribe of Indians per se, but if they crossed him, killed his men, or stole what rightfully belonged to him, they instantly became his enemies. They were the same as any other cutthroat rustlers.

  And Dixon only knew one way to deal with them.

  He would have led the chase himself, but he had laid that thought aside in preference to staying with the herd, his livelihood.

  Prayers wouldn’t help the trackers now, he was convinced, and didn’t bother with them. Pickering and company already knew they had his trust, and while that wouldn’t get them through a shooting scrape, Dixon supposed it couldn’t hurt.

  He hoped to see them all alive and well within another day or two at the outside.

  And failing that, he told himself that he had done his very best to see they were prepared for trouble on the trail.

  At some point Fate would have to do the rest.

  * * *

  * * *

  THEY STOPPED HERE for a bit,” Bill Pickering observed. “See how the cattle milled around instead of holding to their route?”

  Bishop supposed that he was right but drew no inference as to how far ahead of them the stolen longhorns might be now. Scanning the landscape they had recently traversed while heading in the opposite direction, he saw no place where the purloined steers could be concealed while snipers lay in wait to deal with manhunters.

  “Wish we could tell how far they’ve gone ahead of us by now,” Whit Melville said.

  “You and me both,” Bishop allowed.

  “No point in sitting here and jawing over it,” said Pickering. “They ain’t here now, and every minute wasted puts them farther out ahead of us.”

  Toby decided not to mention it was Pickering who’d called the trampled grass and other signs of steers briefly at rest to their attention in the first place. Nothing would be gained from setting off an argument, and Pickering was right. Their first job was to catch up with the raiders, then dispose of them as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  This time he didn’t look at Whit to see if Pickering’s remark had struck a nerve. All three of them were on the prod, and rightly so, but Bishop knew they had to keep their anger focused on the enemies who’d struck them overnight, killing their friends and making off with Mr. Dixon’s stock.

  Toby had only dealt with hostile Indians one time before and hadn’t killed any that time. He had been staying over in a little Texas town called Barrenburg that mostly lived up to its name. He’d been recuperating from a bender in a harlot’s crib when a small raiding party tore through town, whooping and hollering, setting alight the dry-goods store, and by the time Bishop had reached his Colt, the braves had galloped off, leaving a haze of smoke and shattered nerves behind.

  His one and only skirmish with red men—at least, before last night.

  And now, whatever lay ahead.

  * * *

  * * *

  BILL PICKERING TRIED to ignore Bishop and Melville talking back and forth behind him. They were keeping up a decent pace and hadn’t held him back so far, hence he could find no call for snapping at them, even though his nerves urged him to outbursts of pique.

  He worried first and most about the herd, with Gavin Dixon left in solitary charge. Nobody better, when he thought about it, but he’d worked for Mr. D so long he still felt like a shirker, leaving Dixon with an epic list of chores while he—the foreman hired to shoulder much of that—was riding off with two of Gavin’s hands when they were needed most on duty with the drive.

  It didn’t matter that they were obeying orders, risking life and limb with only fifty-fifty odds at best of managing to pull it off. Deserting Dixon, as it seemed to Pickering, still went against his grain.

  The hell of it: He knew that they were on the raiders’ trail but couldn’t say how far ahead his targets were, how recently they’d made the tracks that he was following. Each yard he covered on his sorrel mare led Pickering farther from Dixon and the herd that needed him.

  Damned if I do, he thought. Damned if I don’t.

  They’d covered four, maybe five miles since l
eaving camp a smidgen after dawn. The only edge he had over his enemies so far was that the longhorns they’d appropriated from the herd were bound to slow them down. Whether the raiding party was composed of six or seven men—an estimate advanced by drovers who had seen them fleeing in the dark—they had approximately four or five steers each to watch and manage on their trail, wherever it was leading them. Steers generally weren’t as bad as mules for balking when you wanted them to move, but neither were they little lambs that fell in line instinctively and did as they were told.

  The trick, when Pickering caught up with them at last, would be eliminating six or seven armed, determined men without harming the steers or spooking them into another wild dash over hill and dale. He thought—hoped—that the first part of his task was feasible, though perilous. The second bit threatened to waste more time he and the trail drive couldn’t spare.

  To cover that, he slowed his mare a bit, reluctantly, and spoke as his companions fell in place to either side of him. “When we catch up to them,” he said, “no hesitation cutting loose. The only way we win this thing is by taking down as many of them as we can before they have a fighting chance.”

  “You mean, like, shoot ’em in the back?” asked Melville.

  “Back, front, any way you can,” said Pickering. “They’re thieves and murderers, remember. Being Comanche, or whichever tribe, they’re also violating treaties with the government. Same thing as any other outlaw wanted by the law, dead or alive.”

  “But we don’t give ’em to the sheriff, right?” Whit asked.

  “What sheriff?” Pickering replied. “Do you know where we are, what county, who he is, or where he’s got his office?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Right. So put the law out of your mind and concentrate on Mr. D’s orders. Eliminate the threat, recover any steers we can, and get back with ’em to the drive.”

  “Yes, sir. Just getting that straight in my mind.”

  “And is it straight now?”