Follow the Free Wind

by Leigh Brackett

  From time to time a mounted vaquero moved across the landscape. There was some action at the corrals. Probably they were busy with the endless and pleasurable work of breaking colts. Dust rose in the air like smoke and drifted slowly away. Jim wondered what Amelita was doing. Cooking frijoles, probably, bending over the fire in her poppy-red skirt, stirring the big iron kettle with a big iron spoon while the heat made her cheeks glisten.

  Rich and Pegleg slept. Ten of Walkara’s Utes were passing the time in the arroyo. Birds called and whistled. High up in the blue sky broad-winged buzzards circled, silently, patiently, riding the wind. The sun dropped toward the hills on the other side of the valley. They became one-dimensional, shapes cut out of paper, purple and blue. The sun burned fiercely on them and then was gone. The valley filled with blueness. Lights pricked out among the buildings of the rancho, and a change came in the air, a cool breath chilling the sweat of the day’s warmth.

  Rich and Pegleg woke and sat up. They ate jerky and cold tortillas, and drank from a leather bottle. The last glow faded from the land. They slid down into the arroyo and led their horses out over rottonstone that turned under their feet. Then they mounted and rode.

  The Utes strung themselves out like shadows, riding fast and without sound except for soft chirring noises they used to start the scattered horses moving. Jim, Rich, and Pegleg rode straight for the rancho. They hid in a clump of live oaks, giving the Utes time to finish their sweep and get the herd bunched up and going. In the windows of the rancho some of the lights went out, and then more. They were an early-rising, early-sleeping folk except when there was a fandango. When the time seemed right Jim said, “Let’s go.”

  They burst out of the live oaks running, heading for the corral where the best of the saddle stock was kept.

  The dogs began to bark. Jim bent low over his horse’s neck, urging him on. The rush of air whipped the mane across his face. He reined up beside the corral and began to drop the bars of the gate. The penned-up horses squealed and blew, shying this way and that with their necks over each other’s rumps. The dogs were screaming now in their rage. Candles were being lighted in the buildings. Men came running out with their shirttails flapping. They shouted to one another, flourishing pistols. Rich put a shot carefully into the ’dobe over the heads of the ones he could see the best. They took cover, and Jim charged into the corral. He yelled like a Crow and beat the horses with his hat. They broke out through the gate in a solid stream with Rich and Pegleg hazing them on each side and Jim behind them howling. Pegleg and Rich gave the war cry too and the Utes out on the slope joined in. It sounded as though Walkara’s whole band was there. Jim fired his rifle in the air. A few pistol shots followed them but the stampeding horses were quickly out of range.

  The valley lay open and quiet before them. All along the slope more horses were running, in twos and threes and bunches, driven on by the Ute riders. They came pouring together like a gathering of rivulets in flood-time until there was a river of horses rushing down the valley, swallowing up and carrying with it the forty or so that Jim and the others were driving. They fell out to the side and rested a minute, watching the dust and the tossing heads go by.

  Rich looked back at the rancho. “How long?”

  “They’ll round up horses,” Pegleg said. “They always got more. Give ’em a half, three-quarters of an hour.”

  Jim said, “I worry about them, but I’m worried more about the ones lower down.”

  From then on they hung beside the leaders, keeping the herd pointed. The horses could not keep up that pace forever. They slowed to a steady lope and the dark land rolled by. The stars swung overhead, very slowly, and the air was chill. Jim shivered, more with pleasure than with cold. The strong-driving body of the horse was pleasant between his knees, and the clean warm smell of the herd was pleasant too, the smell of victory. He was suddenly keenly lonesome for Young Bear and Muskrat.

  Ahead in the night there were cries and a drumming thunder.

  Jim stood up in his stirrups. Then he heard Pegleg bawling, “Turn them! Turn them!” The noise came closer, the sound of an avalanche rolling down a mountain. Jim saw Rich beside him. They yelled and beat the leaders’ faces with their hats, shouldered them with their mounts. They turned. A solid mass of horses came bolting out of the dark at breakneck speed and shot across what had been their front. Utes hung on the flanks of the herd, screeching. Pegleg roared at them. One of them paused and flung an arm toward the backtrail. “Californios/” he yelled, and raced, on. Pegleg shouted in Ute, in Spanish, in profane English. The herd moved faster, following the one that was now ahead of it. Jim and Rich let the Utes handle it and dropped back to join Pegleg in the dust of the drag.

  They ran under black mountains. And now out on the broad plain there were pinpricks of light. Scattered ranchos, a distant pueblo, were aroused and angry. Boots were thumping the hard-packed, wind-eroded streets of the pueblo, the huge Spanish rowels dragging and clinking with their own harsh music. Men were shouting, boys were running four horses, and pistols, smooth-bores, anything that would shoot were being snatched up and loaded. From the low doorways and deep small windows with the iron grilles women and large-eyed children were watching, and the thin-bellied dogs were everywhere, yapping. Jim thought of the vaqueros who had played the coin game with him and won, and he multiplied those hard hands and faces by the scattered lights. It had been easier to raid horses from the Blackfeet and Cheyennes. If they pressed you, you killed them. This was different. The Utes did not make war on white men. Certainly he and Rich and Pegleg would not do so.

  “If we can’t outrun ’em,” Pegleg said, “shoot their horses. They’re harmless on foot.”

  “What do we do until daylight?” Rich asked cynically. “I’m a middling good shot but only when I can see.”

  “Godamighty,” said Jim. “Look there.”

  There were horses, hundreds of horses, racing across the dark plain. Jim had been staring at them for a long time without seeing them, and then all at once he had sensed movement, a fluid streaming of the darkness in many places, and he knew what it was. There must have been seven or eight herds of varying sizes, coming from different directions but all heading toward the same place, the place where their own wild torrent of horseflesh was heading, Cajon Pass. Pegleg let his breath out in an exultant howl. He cursed and pounded his wooden leg and laughed. “This is a horse raid!” he said. “This is some!”

  A lot more quietly Rich said, “Horses.” He rode coughing in the dust a little way. “There’s our answer. Horses.”

  The herds rushed nearer, converging, their tossing fronts showing dark and tumultuous out of the paler dust clouds they carried with them. The cries of the Ute riders sounded, shrill and sharp.

  There were other sounds. The voices of white men, and shots banging, not far away.

  “Horses,” Rich said. “We can spare a few to hide behind.”

  Jim fired his rifle, high. Rich fired his, and then Pegleg. The authoritative voices of those long mountain rifles would give the Californios something to think about for a minute or two. The three of them made for the nearest of the converging herds. A man rode to meet them. From his voice and the way he rode Jim recognized Sanpitch. Pegleg told him in rapid Ute what they wanted. Sanpitch objected, and Jim said, “We can lose a few horses now and get through the pass, or we can lose a lot more later. Look at them, Sanpitch. There are more than we can drive.”

  Sanpitch was an intelligent Indian. He gave in. But Jim knew that he would about as soon have given up his right arm as part of the herd he had taken.

  They caught up with the leaders and turned them, heading them toward the trail where the voices and the shots came from. Presently they saw the riders, a long dark blot moving fast, picked out with starshine on metal. The Utes had been working hard to cut the herd. Jim and Sanpitch and the others dropped back and let the point of the herd go by itself. The mass of horses separated. What had been the swing became the new point and the
bulk of the herd tore off toward the pass. The detached point went careering into the bunched up riders, scattered them, tossed them, absorbed them, and carried them away.

  Jim said, “We ain’t got it licked yet.”

  “Let’s be happy with right now,” Pegleg said, and made his horse jump.

  The river of horses flowed into the pass. It streamed upward along the winding grade, wild eyes and shaking manes, straining shoulders and flying legs, slowed by the ascent and constricted by its own numbers but pushed on by the howling Utes and the pressure of those that came behind. The head of the river snaked up over the crest and plunged downward, gained speed again, and went bursting out into the desert with a roar and a squeal and a great fragrance of trampled sage.

  The weaker ones were falling out. They let them go. The more there were for the Spaniards to round up the slower the chase would be. They kept pushing the herd but not so hard. Dawn came gray and cool over the infinite desolation of the Mojave, and then as the sun rose the grayness and the coolness slid away in the hollows of the sand. A marching line of mountains, naked as gnawed bones, turned a faded pink streaked with white as though by the droppings of gigantic birds. Sand and sage became a monotony painful to the eye, except for those places in the distance where alkali flats glittered with a searing whiteness. Almost at once it was hot. But not so hot as in summer, when animals dropped in their tracks even sooner than men.

  Pegleg stood on top of a dune and watched the horses go by. “How many do you make ’em?”

  Jim said, “Call it two thousand.”

  “Two thousand!” Pegleg cried. “Hell, man, there’s three thousand right in front of your eyes and more coming. Call it four, anyway. Call it five!”

  Jim didn’t argue. He didn’t care. It was a lot of horses. He thought it was probably the biggest lot of horses that had ever been lifted in one raid. He was satisfied. His chief worry now was hanging onto them.

  After a while a dust devil came chasing them on a long slant from the north. It was Walkara, bringing in a small bunch of only sixty head. But Jim knew that herd and how much it was worth, and how very well it was guarded. He said gravely to Walkara, “The Hawk of the Mountains is a great lifter of horses.”

  Walkara smiled, a proud, handsome man in the bitter sunlight. “The Antelope too is great,” he said generously. “Before he raided like a Crow. Now he raids like a Ute.” He rode up along the vast herd to talk to his brothers.

  The sun rose higher. The dry wind sucked the moisture out of skin and flesh, scarified the mouth and tongue. The horses were tired. They lagged with their heads hanging. And Rich pointed back through the shimmering white glare to where another dust devil was moving, still far off but coming swiftly, from the direction of the pass.

  Walkara and his brothers joined the white men at the tail of the herd, looking back. Walkara echoed Jim’s earlier thought. “If they were Shoshoni it would be easy.”

  “Pity they ain’t,” Pegleg said, “but they ain’t.”

  “Well,” said Walkara, “there’s another way.” He nodded at Sanpitch and laughed. “My brother is sad that he had to part with many of his horses.”

  Rich looked at Sanpitch and then at the herd. “You wouldn’t say,” he asked, “that your brother is maybe just a little mite greedy?”

  Sanpitch said, “It may be true that I have enough horses. But what shall I do for saddles?”

  They rode a little farther. Then Sanpitch and his brothers dismounted with twenty picked men. “The herd will have to run now,” Walkara said. “They’re tired but it won’t kill them.” He looked at the white men. “This has to be done on foot.”

  Pegleg shook his head. “I’ll stay with my horse.”

  “What does the Antelope say?”

  Jim looped up his reins and turned his horse into the herd. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t let these Utes go back to the mountains with a story of how the Antelope had ridden away like a squaw. He didn’t have Pegleg’s excuse. Rich followed him, and for once he did not swear or complain about Jim’s foolishness. He simply wore an expression of resigned disgust.

  Pegleg and the Utes forced the herd into a sullen, heavy run. They all seemed to go away quite rapidly. The desert opened up wide around the dismounted men. Heat burned up through the soles of Jim’s Spanish boots and he felt shrunken to the size of a child. Very bitterly he regretted his horse.

  The dust cloud raced toward them. Walkara smiled. “We have time for a drink,” he said.

  In this blistering desolation there was water, if you knew where to find it. It came up out of an ancient well with a broken coping, and it was cool, and bitter with alkali. The riders had been here, stopping one by one as they passed. The horses would not drink until they reached the river. Around the well there were the remains of ancient walls and a scattering of natural rock heaped in tumbled piles and carved to queer shapes by wind and chafing sand. The men drank and then found places in the rocks and lay close in them, waiting.

  The Californios came.

  It was a large party, perhaps sixty men. They had ridden hard for a long way and they were white with dust like millers. Peering at them through a chink in the rocks, Jim hoped that Sanpitch and Walkara knew what they were doing. These were angry men. Jim did not blame them. He had had horses run off himself. He had no wish to kill any of them. He had no wish to let any of them kill him, either. For the first time he was sorry he had got into the whole business.

  Sanpitch waited until all the Spaniards were standing around the well, unsuspecting and concerned with water. Then he screamed the war cry. The other Utes took it up. There was a tremendous volley of shots from behind the rocks, all high, but the Spaniards would not realize that until later. They dived for cover behind the walls. The horses bolted. Lean half-naked shapes ran among them, grabbing trailing reins, swinging up to ride clinging flat to the horses’ sides. Jim fired and reloaded and fired again as fast as he could. The rifles behind the rocks were keeping the Spaniards pinned. There was a constant wolfish howling.

  Walkara came past, leading horses. Rich rose and scuttled to him. Jim ran after. Now that the rifle fire had slackened, the Spaniards began to shoot over their walls. Jim’s hat spun off and he fell flat, knocked down by a stunning blow on the head. He struggled to get up and felt someone pulling at him. It was Rich. He staggered to his feet, saw a horse in front of him and climbed onto it, more by instinct than reason, with Rich hauling and swearing at him. By the time his sight cleared, he and Rich and all the Utes and all the Spaniards’ horses were going full tilt away from the well.

  “They’ll have a long walk home,” Walkara shouted, and the Utes all laughed. Sanpitch was astride a fine black stallion with saddle trappings all trimmed in silver. He was yelling as he rode, for sheer pleasure.

  Jim lifted his hand and felt the place where the ball had grazed him.

  “Leave it alone,” Rich said. “I’ll fix it when we get to the river.” He looked hard at Jim. “And this one you owe me for!”

  Jim began to laugh. They had all done a mighty thing, and they were safe now, and still alive, heading for the Colorado with a fortune in horses and nothing to bar the way. What was one small headache?

  He rode up beside Sanpitch and raced him, yelling.

  TWENTY

  They were at Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas. They were rich. They were full-fed and getting drunk.

  “What’ll you do with your money?” Jim asked.

  “Spend it,” Pegleg said. “What else is it good for?”

  William Bent laughed, “God help Taos!” He was a lean, wiry man with a predatory nose and a sharp, bright, intelligent eye. He and his older brother Charles had been beaten out of the fur trade in the north, but they had not suffered by it. They were kings in this great adobe castle that looked south across the river into Mexico. With their partner Ceran St. Vrain they had made the Santa Fe trade and they still controlled it. Charles was married to a Spanish lady and spent much time in Santa Fe now. W
illiam’s wife was a Cheyenne, the beautiful Owl Woman, and this was his domain, a vast spaciousness of sky and sun and desert rivers, winter northers and summer storms, and a wide, wide tawny plain where the Cheyenne bands came riding down to trade and you could see the dust of their coming a hundred miles away. Jim liked William Bent.

  “I think,” said Rich slowly, and stopped. He was far gone, in a gentle meditative way. He stared for a while at some pleasant vision. Then he said, “I think I’ll buy me a rancho.”

  “Where?” Jim asked.

  “ ’Round Taos. Somewhere. Settle down. Run some stock.”

  “Settle!” Bent said. “Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, and Ute, they’ll settle you. They’ll run your stock.”

  “Um,” said Rich, nodding. “But them beaver streams are cold. Wasn’t ever anybody up to beaver like I was, and I never minded getting froze, but I mind now. ’Specially when beaver’s scarcer than redheaded Indians, and don’t bring hardly a plug of tobacco when you get it.”

  It was early afternoon and the light that came in from the courtyard was bright enough in spite of the lean-to roof that shaded the room. There was no particular reason why Jim should pick that moment to see in that inflowing light that Rich was gray as a badger and that his face was no longer young.

  “Fur trade’s coming on bad times,” Bent said. “Some are still making out, and I guess some always will, but it’s not what it was.” There was a certain note of satisfaction in his voice when he added, “The boys were so busy cutting each others’ throats they never once realized they were cutting their own.”

  “See?” Rich said. “I got to buy me that rancho.” He stared out the window and then said in that same slow, mild voice, “Those two are still standing there watching.” He was not quite as far gone as he seemed. “There was four. Other two went away ’bout the time I really began to drink.”

  Jim had noticed that too, but he hadn’t said anything. The Cheyenne warriors stood where they had stood for almost two hours, on the opposite side of the courtyard against the wall, tall, slender men with their blankets folded close around them and eagle feathers drooping from their hair. There were nearly always Cheyennes around Bent’s Fort, friends or relatives, and often a village was camped in the Big Timbers farther downriver, where there was wood and grass. There was one camped there now, and Jim was figuring time and distance.