by Zane Grey
Texas Joe was using forceful range language when he rode in, and manifestly had been irritated by something.
“What ails yu, Tex?” asked Brite. “I’m feelin’ cheerful, myself.”
“Yu’re loco. Do yu know what we did? — We hired them cowhands to hawg-tie the two Comanches an’ to keep ’em in Doan’s storehouse for a couple of days. Great idee! But all for nothin’. This buck we was shootin’ at had counted our wagons, hawses, cattle, an’ drivers. We was shore shootin’ at thet redskin to kill. But he was oot of range. What’n hell was eatin’ yu men thet yu didn’t see him long ago?”
Brite maintained a discreet silence.
“Boss, the supplies will be oot pronto,” went on Texas as he dismounted. “Reddie, if yu have another hawse handy I’ll relieve one of the boys.”
“Same heah,” spoke up Pan Handle.
“Throw some grub pronto, Moze.... Boss, our man Hite rode through heah day before yestiddy mawnin’. He had three fellars with him, one crippled up serious an’ had to be tied in the saddle. Hite was spittin’ fire, an’ they all was ugly.”
“Did they stop at Doan’s?”
“Shore, accordin’ to Bud. They was oot of grub an’ ammunition. Had only two pack hawses. We shore won’t see no more of Hite till we get to Dodge. He hangs oot at Hays City, so Bud said, an’ comes often to Dodge.”
“Let Hite go, boys. No sense huntin’ up trouble,” advised Brite, tersely.
“Boss, yu’re a forgivin’ cuss,” drawled Texas, admiringly. “Now I just cain’t be that way. An’ Pan, heah, why, he’ll ride a thousand miles to meet thet Ross Hite again. An’ I’m goin’ with him.”
“Yu air not,” spoke up Reddie, tartly, a red spot in each cheek.
“Wal, dog-gone! There’s the kid, bossy as ever. Brite, if I get plugged on the way up yu let Reddie boss the ootfit.”
Texas Joe had found a way to make Reddie wince, and he was working it on every possible occasion. The chances were surely even that the daring cowboy would lose his life one way or another before the end of the trail, and Reddie simply could not stand a hint of it without betraying her fear. Probably, to judge from her flashing eyes, she would have made a strong retort had it not been for the arrival of Williams and Smiling Pete.
“Wal, heah we air to set in our last supper on Moze,” said Williams, genially. “I shore hate to say good-by to this ootfit. Folks get awful close on such drives as we had comin’ up.”
“Reddie Bayne, don’t yu want to stay behind with us?” asked Smiling Pete, teasingly. “We shore won’t boss yu aboot like thet Texas fellar.”
“Ump-umm. I like yu, Smilin’ Pete,” replied Reddie, in the same spirit. “But I’m strong for Santone an’ Dad’s ranch.”
“Dad?” echoed the hunters, in unison.
“Shore. I’ve adopted Mr. Brite as my dad.”
“Haw! Haw! The lucky son-of-a-gun. He ain’t so old, neither. Mebbe Hash an’ me will have to send our cairds to yore — —”
But Reddie ran away behind the chuck-wagon.
“Come heah, yu men, an’ be serious,” said Brite. “We want all the hunches yu can give us for the rest of this drive north.”
* * * * *
Brite’s outfit left Doan’s Post before sunrise next morning with just short of six thousand long-horn cattle. The buffalo herd had apparently kept along the Red River.
In the afternoon of that day a band of Comanches rode out from a pass between two hills and held up the cavalcade. Brite galloped ahead in some trepidation, yelling for Reddie to leave the remuda and follow him. When he arrived at the head of the herd he found Texas Joe and Pan Handle, with the other drivers, lined up before about thirty squat, pointed-faced, long-haired Indians.
“Boss, meet Nigger Hawse an’ his ootfit,” was Texas’s laconic greeting.
“Howdy, Chief,” returned Brite, facing Nigger Horse. This Comanche did not look his fame, but appeared to be an ordinary redskin, stolid and unofficious. He did not altogether lack dignity. To Brite he was a surprise and a relief. But his basilisk eyes might have hid much. Brite wished the buffalo-hunters had come on with them.
“How,” replied Nigger Horse, raising a slow hand.
“What yu want, Chief?”
“Beef.”
Brite waved a magnanimous hand toward the herd.
“Help yoreself.”
The Comanche spoke in low grunts to his redmen.
“Tobac,” he went on, his dark, inscrutable eyes again fixing on Brite.
“Plenty. Wagon come,” replied Brite, pointing to Moze, who had the team approaching at a trot. Nigger Horse gazed in the direction of the chuck-wagon, then back at the vast herd, and lastly at the formidably armed drivers solidly arrayed in a line.
“Flour,” resumed the chief. His English required a practiced ear to distinguish, but Brite understood him and nodded his willingness.
“Coffee.”
Brite held up five fingers to designate the number of sacks he was willing to donate.
“Beans.”
“Heap big bag,” replied Brite.
Manifestly this generosity from a trail driver had not been the accustomed thing.
“Boss, the old devil wants us to refuse somethin’,” put in Texas.
“An’ he’ll keep on askin’ till yu have to refuse,” added Pan Handle.
Moze arrived with the chuck-wagon, behind which the Comanches rode in a half circle, greedy-eyed and jabbering. Moze’s black face could not turn pale, but it looked mighty strange.
“Pile oot, Moze,” ordered Brite. “Open up yore box, an get oot the goods we selected for this missionary business.”
“Yas s-suh — y-yas, suh,” replied the negro, scared out of his wits.
“Sack of flour first, Moze,” said Brite. “An’ throw it up on his hawse. Make oot it’s heavy.”
Obviously this last was not necessary. Either the sack was heavy or Moze had grown weak, for he labored with it and almost knocked Nigger Horse off his mustang. The Indian let out what sounded like: “Yah! Yah!” But he surely held on to the flour. Then Brite ordered Moze to burden the Comanche further with the generous donation of tobacco, coffee and beans.
“There yu air, Chief,” called out Brite, making a show of friendliness.
“Flour,” said Nigger Horse.
“Yu got it,” replied Brite, pointing to the large sack.
The Indian emphatically shook his head.
“Greasy old robber!” ejaculated Texas. “He wants more. Boss, heah’s where yu stand fast. If yu give in he’ll take all our grub.”
“Brite, don’t give him any more. We’d better fight than starve,” said Pan Handle.
Whereupon Brite, just as emphatically, shook his head and said: “No more, Chief.”
The Comanche yelled something in his own tongue. Its content was not reassuring.
“Heap powder — bullet,” added Nigger Horse.
“No,” declared Brite.
The Indian thundered his demand. This had the effect of rousing Brite’s ire, not a particularly difficult task. Brite shook his head in slow and positive refusal.
“Give Injun all!” yelled the chief.
“GIVE INJUN HELL!” roared Brite, suddenly furious.
“Thet’s the talk, boss,” shouted Texas. “Yu can bluff the old geezer.”
“Brite, stick to thet,” broke in Pan Handle, in ringing voice. “Listen, all of yu. If it comes to a fight, Tex an’ I air good for Nigger Hawse an’ four or five on each side of him. Yu boys look after the ends.”
“Reddie, yu duck back behind the wagon an’ do yore shootin’ from there,” ordered Texas.
Then ensued the deadlock. It was a critical moment, with life or death quivering on a hair balance. How hideously that savage’s lineaments changed! The wily old Comanche had made his bluff and it had been called. Probably he understood more of the white man’s language than he pretended. Certainly he comprehended the cold front of those frowning trail drivers.
> “Boys, yu got time to get on the ground,” called the practical Texas, slipping out of his saddle and stepping out in front of his horse. In another moment all the men, except Brite, had followed suit. Texas and Pan Handle held a gun in each hand. At such close range they would do deadly work before the Comanches could level a rifle or draw a bow. Nigger Horse undoubtedly saw this — that he had bluffed the wrong outfit. Still, he did not waver in his savage dominance.
Brite had an inspiration.
“Chief,” he burst out, “we do good by yu. We give heaps. But no more. If yu want fight, we fight.... Two trail herds tomorrow.” Here Brite held up two fingers, and indicating his cattle, made signs that more were coming up the trail. “Heap more. So many like buffalo. White men with herds come all time. Two moons.” And with both hands up he opened each to spread his fingers, and repeated this time and again.
“Ugh!” ejaculated Nigger Horse. He understood, and that tactful persuasion of Brite’s was the deciding factor. He let out sharp guttural sentences. Two of his followers wheeled their ponies toward the herd, fitting arrows to their bows. Then Nigger Horse, burdened with his possessions, not one parcel of which would he relinquish to eager hands, rode back without another word, followed by his band.
“Close shave!” breathed Brite, in intense relief.
“Shore. But closer for thet bull-haided Comanche an’ his ootfit,” declared Texas. “He made a mistake an’ got in too close. We’d cleaned them oot in ten seconds. Hey, Pan?”
“I’d like to have broke loose,” replied Pan Handle, in a queer voice.
“Let wal enough alone, yu fire-eaters,” yelled Brite.
“Boss, we’ll hang together till the remuda passes,” returned Texas.
“Whoopee! We’re a hot ootfit!” shouted Deuce Ackerman, lustily, his head thrown back, his jaw corded. The relaxation of other drivers showed in yell or similar wild statement.
“I doan’ know aboot this heah ootrageous luck,” observed Whittaker, softly, as if to himself. He was the quietest of the drivers.
“Somebody’d had to shoot quick to beat me borin’ thet dirty old redskin,” spoke up Reddie, coolly.
“My Gawd! The girl’s ruined!” ejaculated Texas.
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” roared the tenderfoot Bender. But a second look at the hulking, fierce-eyed, black-faced, young Pennsylvanian convinced the cattleman that Bender’s tenderfoot days were passed. He himself felt the cold, hard, wild spirit rise.
“On, boys,” he ordered. “Once across the Canadian we’ll be halfway an’ more to Dodge.”
“We’ll drive ’em, boss,” replied Texas Joe, grimly. “No more lazy, loafin’, fattenin’ mossy-horns this trip!”
They made ten miles before night, ending the longest drive since they had left San Antonio. The night fell dark, with rumble of thunder and sheet lightning in the distance. The tired cattle bedded down early and held well all night. Morning came lowering and threatening, with a chill wind that swept over the herd from the north. Soon the light failed until day was almost as dark as night. A terrific hailstorm burst upon the luckless herd and drivers. The hailstones grew larger as the storm swept on, until the pellets of gray ice were as large as walnuts. The drivers from suffering a severe pounding passed to extreme risk of their lives. They had been forced to protect heads and faces with whatever was available. Reddie Bayne was knocked off her horse and carried senseless to the wagon; San Sabe swayed in his saddle like a drunken man; Texas Joe tied his coat round his sombrero and yelled when the big hailstones bounced off his head; bloody and bruised, the other drivers resembled men who had engaged in fierce fistic encounters.
When this queer freak of nature passed, the ground was covered half a foot deep with hailstones. Dead rabbits and antelope littered the plain, and all the way, as far as Brite could see to the rear, stunned and beaten cattle lay on the ground or staggered along.
“I told yu-all things were gonna happen,” yelled Texas to his followers as they made camp that night, sore and beaten of body. “But I’m not carin’, if only the buffalo will pass us by.”
Next day they were visited by members of a tribe of Kiowas supposed to be friendly with the whites. They had held “heap big peace talk” with Uncle Sam. Brite did not give so much as he had in the case of the Comanches, yet he did well by them.
During the night these savages stampeded the south end of the herd. How it was done did not appear until next day, when among the scattered cattle was found a long-horn here and there with an arrow imbedded in his hide. Some of these had to be shot. The herd was held over until all the stampeded steers and cows could be rounded up. It took three days of strenuous riding by day and guarding by night. Texas Joe and his trail drivers passed into what San Sabe described as being “poison-fightin’ mad!”
Bitter as gall to them was it to see two trail herds pass them by and forge to the front. After seven weeks or more of leadership! But Brite did not take it so hard. Other herds now, and both together not so large as his, would bear the brunt of what lay ahead.
That fourth day, when they were off again, buffalo once more made their appearance. Soldiers from Fort Cobb, a post forty miles off the trail to the east, informed Brite that they had been turned back by the enormous, impenetrable mass of buffalo some miles westward. They had been trailing a marauding bunch of Apaches from the Staked Plain.
Brite’s men drove on, and their difficulties multiplied. Stampedes became frequent; storms and swollen creeks further impeded their progress; the chuck-wagon, springing leaks in its boat-like bottom, had almost to be carried across the North Fork of the Red. Sometimes it became necessary to build pontoons and riders had to swim their horses alongside, holding the pontoons in place. But they kept on doggedly, their foreman cool and resourceful, all bound to this seemingly impossible drive.
* * * * *
Pond Creek, which headed sixty miles northwest of Fort Cobb, was an objective Texas Joe spoke of for twenty-four hours and drove hard one long day to reach.
Brite had his misgivings when at sunset of that day he rode to the top of a slope and saw the herd gaining momentum on the down grade, drawn by sight and scent of water after a hot, dry drive.
This creek, usually only a shallow run, appeared bank-full, a swift, narrow river extremely dangerous at that stage for beast and man. There had been no rain that day anywhere near the region the herd had traversed. Texas Joe had been justified in thinking Pond Creek was at normal height, and he had let the herd go over the ridge without first scouting ahead, as was his custom. It was too late now unless the herd could be stopped.
Brite spurred his horse down the slope, yelling over his shoulder for Reddie to hurry. Drivers on each side of the herd were forging to the front, inspired, no doubt, by the fiercely riding Texas Joe. It was bad going, as Brite found out to his sorrow, when he was thrown over the head of his falling horse, thus sustaining a mean fall. Reddie was quick to leap off and go to his side.
“Oh, Dad! Thet was a tumble!” she cried. “I thought yu’d break yore neck.... Set up. Air yu all heah? Let me feel.”
“I reckon — nothin’ busted,” groaned the cattleman, getting up laboriously. “If thet ground hadn’t been soft — wal, yu’d — —”
“My Gawd, Dad! Look!” cried Reddie, frantically, leaping on her horse. “They’re stampedin’ down this hill.”
Brite got up to stand a moment surveying the scene. A tremendous trampling, tussling, cracking roar, permeated by a shrill bawling sound, dinned in his ears.
“Red, it’s only the back end thet’s stampedin’,” he shouted.
“Yes. But they’re rushin’ the front down.”
“Rustle. We can help some, but don’t take chances.”
They galloped down along the flank of the jostling cattle to the short quarter of a mile of slope between the point of the herd and the river. The drivers were here in a bunch, yelling, riding, shooting, plunging their mounts at the foremost old mossy-horns. Brite and Reddie rode in to help, ke
eping close to the outside.
Then followed a hot-pressed, swift, and desperate charge on the part of the trail drivers to hold the front of the herd. It was hazardous work. Texas Joe yelled orders through pale lips, but no driver at any distance heard them. The bulls and steers had been halted, but as pressure was exerted in the rear they began to toss their great, horned heads, and to bawl and tear up the ground. The mass of the herd, up on the steeper slope, maddened now to get to the water, could not be bolstered back by the front line.
“BACK!” yelled Texas, in stentorian voice, waving wide his arms to the drivers. All save San Sabe heard or saw, and ran their horses to either side. Deuce, Texas, Reddie, Whittaker, and Bender reached the open behind Brite just as a terrible groan ran through the herd.
Texas Joe’s frantic yells and actions actuated all to join in the effort to make San Sabe hear. His position was extremely perilous, being exactly in the center of the straining herd. His horse was rearing. San Sabe, gun in each hand, shot fire and smoke into the very faces of the leaders. Pan Handle, Holden, and Little, flashing by on terrorized horses, failed to attract him. How passionate and fierce his actions! Hatless and coatless, his hair flying, this half-breed vaquero fronted the maddened herd with an instinct of a thousand years of cattle mastery.
The line of horned heads curved at each end, as if a dam had burst where it joined the banks. Suddenly then the center gave way with that peculiar grinding roar of hoofs, horns, and bodies. Like a flood it spilled down upon San Sabe. His horse gave a magnificent leap back and to the side, just escaping the rolling juggernaut. The horse saw, if San Sabe did not, that escape to either side was impossible. On the very horns of the running bulls he plunged for the river.
But he did not gain a yard on those fleet long-horns, propelled forward by thousands of rushing bodies behind. To Brite’s horror it appeared that the limber cattle actually gained on San Sabe. His horse tripped at the brink of the bank and plunged down. The rider was pitched headlong. Next instant a live wall of beasts poured over the brink with resounding hollow splash, and as if by magic the river bank became obliterated.