by Zane Grey
JETT’S OUTFIT FELL into idleness for more days than Milly could remember. She waited for time to pass, and no one would have suspected her longing. When Jett returned to camp from one of his lonely rides Milly would hear his horse breaking the brush along the trail, and she could never repress a wild throb of hope. It might be Tom! But it was always Jett.
One day Jett returned in great perturbation, apparently exhausted. His horse was jaded. Follonsbee and Pruitt were curious, to no end, for Jett did not vouchsafe any explanation. Whatever had happened, however, brought about a change in him and his habits. He stayed in camp.
The business of hide-hunting had been abandoned; not improbably in Jett’s mind for a temporary period, until his men weakened. But they did not weaken; they grew stronger. More days of this enforced idleness crystallized a growing influence — they would never again follow the extraordinary labors of hunting and skinning buffalo. Whatever had been Jett’s unity of outfit was destroyed.
Milly heard the woman tell Jett this, and the ensuing scene had been violent. It marked, further, the revealment of Mrs. Jett’s long-hidden hand in the game. She was the mainspring of Jett’s calculated mechanism, and when the other men realized it, it precipitated something darkly somber into the situation. Follonsbee and Pruitt had manifestly been playing a hand they felt sure would win. Jett could no longer hunt hides, or steal them, either, without his men. All of these lonely rides of his had been taken to find other accomplices, whom Follonsbee and Pruitt knew could not be obtained there on the buffalo range.
Milly heard the bitter quarrel which ensued, between Jett and his wife and the two lieutenants. Catlee was always there, listening, watching, but took no part in any of their talks or quarrels. He was outside. They did not count him at all. Yet he should have been counted immeasurably, Milly concluded. Like herself, Catlee was an intense, though silent, participator in this drama.
The content of that quarrel was simple. Jett had weakened to the extent of wanting to settle in part with his men. Follonsbee and Pruitt were not willing to take what he offered, and the woman, most tenacious and calculating of all of them, refused to allow Jett to relinquish any share of their profits.
There was a deadlock, and the argument put aside for the present. Follonsbee and Pruitt walked away from camp; Jett and his wife repaired to their tent where they conversed heatedly; Catlee and Milly cooked the supper. Milly did not know when the absent men returned.
Next day the atmosphere of Jett’s outfit had undergone further change. The leader was a worried and tormented man, beset by a woman with will of steel and heart of hate; and he saw opposed to him Westerners whose reaction now seemed formidable and deadly. That had roused an immovable stubbornness in him.
Milly saw the disintegration of this group, and what she could not divine herself she gathered from study of Catlee. Indeed, he was the most remarkable of the outfit — he whom the others never considered at all. Not that Milly could understand her impressions! If she tried to analyze Catlee’s effect upon her it only led to doubt. As for Jett and his men, they were a divided outfit, wearing toward dissolution, answering to the wildness of the time and place. The evil that they had done hovered over them, about to enact retribution.
Milly began to dread the issue, though the breaking up of this outfit augured well for her. Then any day Tom Doan, with Hudnall and his men, might ride into Jett’s camp. That meant deliverance for her, in one way or another. If Jett refused to let her go she had but to betray him. Milly held her courage all through this long ordeal, yet she felt more and more the looming of a shadow.
Toward the close of that afternoon the tension relaxed. Follonsbee and Pruitt sauntered off with their heads together; Jett fell asleep under a cottonwood and his sullen wife slouched into her tent; Catlee sat on a log by the river bank, not fishing or smoking, but deep in thought.
Milly, answering the long-resisted impulse, slipped to his side.
“Catlee, I must tell you,” she whispered. “This — all this I’ve gone through has got on my nerves. I’ve waited and hoped and prayed for Tom Doan. . . . He doesn’t come. He has missed this road. I might have stood it longer, but this fight between the Jetts and his men wears on me. I’m scared. Something awful will happen. I can’t stand it. . . . I know you’re my friend — oh, I know it! . . . But you must help me. Tell me what you think. Tell me what to do. It’s all so wild — so strange. . . . That awful woman! She eyes me so — as if she guessed what the men are not thinking of now, but would be soon. . . . Catlee, you’re no — no — you’re not like these people. But whatever you were — or are — remember your mother and save me before — before—”
Milly’s voice failed her. Liberating her fears and hopes had spent her force in expression.
“Lass, have you said all you want to?” queried Catlee, in tense undertone.
“Yes — yes — I could only repeat,” faltered Milly, but she held out trembling hands to him.
The man’s face underwent a change not on the surface. It seemed light, agitation, transpiring beneath a mask.
“Don’t go out of my sight!” he said, with ringing sharpness that made her gasp. Then he turned away, imperturbable as ever.
But Milly had seen or heard something terrible. She backed away from Catlee, sensing this was what he wanted her to do. Yet not out of his sight! What had he meant by that? It signified a crisis nearer than even her fears had presaged, and infinitely worse. All the time he had known what was to happen and all this time he had been her friend. This was what had been on his mind as he watched and listened.
Returning to the wagon that was her abode, she climbed to the seat and sank there, with wide eyes and beating heart. She could see Catlee sitting like a statue, staring into the river. Mrs. Jett came out of her tent, with slow, dragging step, and a face drawn, pale, malignant. Her eyes were beady, the corners of her hard mouth curved down. Heavy, slovenly, she moved to awaken Jett with a kick of foot no less gentle than her mien.
“Come out of it, you loafer,” she said. “My mind’s made up. We’ll break camp at daylight to-morrow. . . . As you ain’t got nerve to kill these men, you can have it out with them to-night. But I’m keepin’ the money an’ we’re goin’ to-morrow.”
“Ahuh!” ejaculated Jett, with a husky finality.
The habit of camp tasks was strong in her, as in all of her companions. Methodically she bestirred herself round the boxes of supplies. Catlee fetched firewood as if he had been ordered to do so. Follonsbee and Pruitt returned to squat under a cottonwood, with faces like ghouls. Jett went into his tent, and when he came out he was wiping his yellow beard. He coughed huskily, as always when drinking.
For once Milly made no move to help. No one called her. It was as if she had not been there. Each member of that outfit was clamped by his or her own thoughts. Supper was prepared and eaten in a silence of unnatural calm. Lull before the storm!
Catlee brought Milly something to eat, which he tendered without speaking. Milly looked down into his eyes, and it seemed to her that she had been mistaken in the kindly nature of the man. As he turned away she noticed a gun in his belt. It was unusual for buffalo-hunters to go armed in such manner.
After supper Mrs. Jett left her husband to do her chores, and slouched toward her tent with a significant, “I’m packin’ an’ I want to get done before dark.”
Milly saw Follonsbee motion for Pruitt and Catlee to draw aside. When they had gone, in separate directions, Follonsbee approached Jett.
“Rand, it’s the last deal an’ the cards are runnin’ bad,” he said.
“Ahuh!” ejaculated the giant, without looking up.
“Your woman has stacked the deck on us,” went on Follonsbee, without rancor. “We ain’t blamin’ you altogether for this mess.”
“Hank, I’m talked out,” replied Jett, heavily.
“You’ve been drinkin’ too much,” went on the other, in conciliatory tones, “but you’re sober now an’ I’m goin’ to try once more
. Will you listen?”
“I ain’t deaf.”
“You’d be better off if you was. . . . Now, Rand, here’s the straight of it, right off the shoulder. You’ve done us dirt. But square up an’ all will be as before. We’ve got another chance here for a big haul — four thousand hides if there’s one, an’ easy. Use your sense. It’s only this greedy woman who’s changed you. Beat some sense into her or chuck her in the river. It’s man to man now. An’ I’m tellin’ you, Pruitt is a dirty little rebel rattlesnake. He’ll sting. I’m puttin’ it to you honest an’ level-headed. If this goes on another day it’ll be too late. We’re riskin’ a lot here. The hunters will find out we’re not killin’ buffalo. We ought to load up an’ move.”
“We’re goin’ to-morrow,” replied Jett, gloomily.
“Who?”
“It’s my outfit an’ I’m movin’. If you an’ Pruitt want to stay here I’ll divide supplies.”
“You’re most obligin’,” returned Follonsbee, sarcastically. “But I reckon if you divide anythin’ it’ll be money, outfit, an’ all.”
“There’s where the hitch comes in,” snarled Jett.
“Are you plumb off your head, man?” queried the other, in weary amaze. “You just can’t do anythin’ else.”
“Haw! Haw!” guffawed Jett.
Follonsbee dropped his lean vulture face and paced to and fro, his hands locked behind his back. Suddenly he shouted for Pruitt. The little rebel came on the run.
“Andy, I’ve talked fair to Jett, an’ it ain’t no use,” said Follonsbee. “He an’ the woman are breakin’ camp to-morrow.”
“Early mawnin’, hey?” queried Pruitt.
“Yes, an’ he’s offered to let us stay here with half the supplies. I told him if he divided anythin’ it’d be money, outfit, an’ all.”
“Wal, what’d he say then?”
“That here was just where the hitch come in. I told him he couldn’t do anythin’ else but divide, an’ then he haw-hawed in my face.”
“You don’t say. Wal, he ain’t very perlite, is he? . . . Hank, I’m through talkin’ nice to Jett. If I talk any more I’ll shore have somethin’ hard to say. Give him till mawnin’ to think it over.”
Pruitt’s sulky temper was not in evidence during this short interview. Milly could not see his face, but his tone and the poise of his head were unlike him.
“Will you fellars have a drink with me?” asked Jett, in grim disdain.
They walked off without replying. Milly peered round. Catlee leaned against a tree close by, within earshot, and the look he cast at Jett was illuminating. Jett was new to the frontier, though he had answered quickly to its evil influence. But otherwise he had not developed. The man’s quick decline from honest living had been the easiest way to satisfy a naturally greedy soul. Drink, the rough life of the open, had paved the way. His taking to this frontier woman was perhaps the worst step. And now the sordid nature of him lowered him beneath these thieves, who had probably put the evil chances in his way. But Jett did not understand Western men, much less desperadoes such as Follonsbee and Pruitt manifestly were.
Darkness settled down over the camp and the river. The crickets and frogs were less in evidence with their chirping and trilling. The camp fire had died out, and soon the dim light in Jett’s tent was extinguished. The lonely night seemed to envelop Milly and strike terror to her soul. What was the portent of the wild mourn of the wolves? Yet there came a mounting intuitive, irresistible hope — to-morow she might be free. Somewhere within a few miles Tom Doan lay asleep, perhaps dreaming of her, as she was thinking of him.
Milly heard Catlee’s stealthy tread. He had moved his bed near her wagon, and his presence there was significant of his unobtrusive guardianship. It relieved her distraught nerves, and soon after that her eyelids wearily closed.
Milly awoke with a start. The stars above were wan in a paling sky; a camp fire crackled with newly burning sticks; the odor of wood smoke permeated the air. The wagon in which she lay was shaking. Then she heard the pound of hoofs, the clink and rattle of harness, a low husky voice she recognized. Jett was hitching up.
With a catch in her breath and a gush of blood along her veins Milly raised herself out of her bed and peered over the side of the wagon. The dark, heavy form of Mrs. Jett could be discerned in the flickering light of fire; contrary to her usual phlegmatic action, she was moving with a celerity that spoke eloquently of the nature of that departure. Apparently none of the others were stirring. Milly moved to the other side of the wagon and peered down, just making out Catlee’s bed under the cottonwood. A dark form appeared against the dim background. Milly saw it move, and presently satisfied herself that Catlee was sitting on his bed, pulling on his boots.
Jett’s huge figure loomed up, passing the wagon. Milly dropped down, so she would not be seen. He spoke in the low, husky voice to the woman. She did not reply. Presently Milly heard again the soft thud of hoofs, coming closer, to cease just back of her wagon. Next she heard the creak and flop of leather. Jett was saddling the fast horses he used in hunting. Again Milly cautiously raised her head. She saw Jett in quick, sharp, decisive, yet nervous action. He haltered both horses to the back of the wagon, and slipped nose bags over their heads. The horses began to munch the oats in the bags.
In a moment more Jett approached the wagon and lifted something over the footboard, just as Milly sank back into her bed. His quick heavy breathing denoted a laboring under excitement. She smelled rum on him. He disappeared, and soon returned to deposit another pack in the back of the wagon. This action he repeated several times. Next Milly heard him fumbling with the wire that held the water keg to the wagon. He tipped the keg, and the slap and gurgle of water told of the quantity.
“Half full,” he muttered to himself. “That’ll do for to-day.”
His heavy footsteps moved away, and then came sound of his hoarse whisper to the woman. She replied:
“Reckon they’ll show up. We’ll not get away so easy, if I know men in this country. You’d better keep a rifle in your hand.”
“Boh!” burst out Jett, in disgusted doubt of her, himself and the whole situation.
“Eat an’ drink now, pronto,” she said. “We won’t stop to wash an’ take these things. I packed some.”
The boil of the coffee pot could be heard, and then a hot sizzle as the water boiled over into the fire. Some one removed it. Again Milly peeped out the wagon side. Dawn was at hand. All was gray, shadowy, obscure beyond the trees, but near at hand it was light enough to see. Jett and the woman were eating. His rifle leaned against the mess box. They ate hurriedly, in silence.
Just then a low rumble like thunder broke the stillness of the morning. Deep, distant, weird, it denoted a thunderstorm to Milly. Yet how long and strangely it held on!
Jett lifted his big head like a listening deer.
“Stampede, by gosh! First one this summer. Lucky it’s across the river.”
“Stampede!” echoed the woman, slowly. “Hum! . . . Are there lots of buffalo across here?”
“They’d make a tolerable herd if they got bunched. I ain’t in love with the idee. They might start the big herd on this side. We’re aimin’ to cross the prairie to the Red River. An’ even if we had two days’ start, a runnin’ herd would catch us.”
“I don’t agree with you, Jett,” remarked the woman. “Anyway, we’re goin’, buffalo or no buffalo.”
Milly listened to the low, distant rumble. What a strange sound! Did it not come from far away? Did she imagine it almost imperceptibly swelled in volume? She strained to hear. It lessened, died away, began again, and though ever so faint, it filled her ears.
Imperceptibly the gray dawn had yielded to daylight. The Jetts had about finished their meal. Whatever was going to happen must befall soon. Milly strove to control her fearful curiosity. Her heart beat high. This issue mattered mightily to her. Peeping over the far side of her wagon, she saw Catlee sitting on his bed, watching the Jetts from his angle. He
saw Milly. Under the brim of his sombrero his eyes appeared to be black holes. He motioned Milly to keep down out of sight. Instinctively she obeyed, sinking back to her bed; and then, irresistibly impelled, she moved to the other side, farther up under the low wagon seat, and peeped out from under it.
At that juncture Pruitt and Follonsbee strode from somewhere to confront the Jetts. Milly would have shrunk back had she not been as if chained. The little rebel struck terror to her heart. Follonsbee resembled, as always, a bird of prey, but now about to strike.
“Jett, you ain’t bravin’ it out?” asked Pruitt, cool and laconic. “Shore you ain’t aimin’ to leave heah without a divvy?”
“I’m leavin’ two wagons, six hosses, an’ most of the outfit,” replied Jett, gruffly. He stared at Pruitt. Something was seeking an entrance into his mind.
“You’re lucky to get that,” snapped the woman.
“Listen to her, Hank,” said Pruitt, turning to Follonsbee.
“I’m listenin’, an’ I don’t have to hear no more. She stacked this deal,” replied Pruitt’s comrade, stridently. Only the timbre of his voice showed his passion; he was as slow and easy as Pruitt.
“Talk to me,” shouted Jett, beginning to give way to the stress of a situation beyond him. “Let my wife—”
“Wife? Aw, hell,” interposed Pruitt, contemptuously. “This Hardin woman ain’t your wife any more’n she’s mine. . . . Jett, you’re yellow, an’ you’re shore talkin’ to men who ain’t yellow, whatever else they are.”
Jett cursed low and deep fumed in his effort to confront these men on an equality. But it was not in him. Fiercely he questioned the woman, “Did you tell them we wasn’t married — yet?”
“Reckon I did. It was when you was silly over this black-eyed step-daughter of yours,” she replied suddenly.
Assuredly Jett would have struck her down but for the unforgetable proximity of Pruitt and Follonsbee. The latter laughed coarsely. Pruitt took a stride forward. His manner was careless, casual, but the set of muscles, the action of him, indicated something different.