A Vast and Desolate Land

by Robert Peecher

  -4-

  Death does not always come when it is expected, nor is it always expected when it comes.

  And sometimes, a man's fortitude may dip into exhaustion without coming close to death.

  Skinner Jake woke in the middle of the night, surprised to find that he was still alive. Thirsty and hungry, still, but alive.

  He pushed himself up out of the wash that he thought would be his grave and stood to face the night.

  The wind was not so strong as it blew during the day, but it was still coming pretty good. And it was cold up on the plain.

  Jake's legs didn't want to work at first, but he got them going. To which direction they were taking him, he did not know.

  Jake could cut the hide off a buffalo pretty fast. He could shoot a buff from three hundred yards, and he knew how to drop the matron cow without killing her so that the others would mill around and make themselves easy targets.

  But he survived with a chuck wagon and a heavy bedroll. He survived with the provisions his outfit brought with it. He survived based on the preparations and supplies of a hunting party.

  Skinner Jake was no frontiersman. He was no pioneer. If he had powder and lead, he could hunt for some sustenance, sure enough, but he was not a man who could survive on his own in the wilderness by his wits and expertise. And especially not in a place like the Llano Estacado where game was scarce and water was scarcer.

  He wandered in the dark, taking tentative steps for fear that he might step in a prairie dog burrow and twist his ankle or fall into a wash and break a leg. He might have been walking in a grand circle for all he knew, but he kept going, hoping he'd set a straight line as a course.

  "If them Comanche find me and reckon I escaped 'em before, it'll be twice as worse for me this time," Skinner Jake told himself.

  Speaking out loud, his voice sounded strange to him. It sounded cold and distant, like someone else's voice.

  But it was a comfort to him to hear something other than the wind.

  "Just keep on walking Jake, old boy. Keep on walking, and soon enough you'll come to something. Water, maybe. Water would be a good thing to find."

  His mouth was so dry and his tongue was starting to feel fat.

  "Some whiskey to put in that water wouldn't be so bad either," Skinner Jake chuckled to himself. "But you ain't likely to find a spring o' whiskey out on the Staked Plains. Not likely a'tall."

  Time and distance deceived on the Llano Estacado. Time crept on with a slowness that was enough to drive a man crazy and distance was too impossible. The miles a man could walk seemed to amount to nothing, but the miles that stretched beyond were like a stuck hand on a watch.

  In the darkness, Skinner Jake just kept his legs moving as best he could. Weak and feeling the pain of thirst and hunger, he simply willed his legs to move.

  Walking in the blackness of night proved better than walking in the day. In the day he could see how little his effort gained him, but at night there was no concept of how much farther he had to go.

  He might have been going for an hour, or maybe it was three hours. Skinner Jake had no knowledge that allowed him to watch the passing stars and judge time. But however long it was, he heard somewhere in front of him a low cooing, carried by the wind.

  "Damn if that don't sound like cows," Skinner Jake said to himself. "Damn if it don't."

  He stopped walking and listened a while. The noise was not constant, but it continued, sometimes louder and sometimes softer.

  "I must be losing my mind," Skinner Jake said, trying to puzzle out in his mind whether or not a herd of cattle might be able to survive on the Llano Estacado.

  "It might be," he said. "But if they can survive, it'll have to be with water. Ain't no other way than that. And that means if they's cattle out here, there must also be water."

  Fearful that he might walk right past them in the dark and never see them and then lose them by morning, Skinner Jake decided to sit down where he was and wait for light. His only worry was that when the sun came up he would discover that there had been no cows and he was, in fact, losing his mind.

  But the sounds continued through the night.

  "Either my mind is right gone, or there is cattle."

  While he waited in the darkness, Jake's thoughts went back to the Comanche attack. He tried to remember if any of the others might have escaped. He had seen some killed and seen the bodies of others when it was over, but he did not know the fate of all of the outfit.

  What came on them should not have been a surprise. Not after what happened. It was that damned fool from Arkansas. Skinner Jake never could decide if he liked that Arkansas man. Cossatot Jim, they called him. Named for some river where his people came from. The man was crude and mean, and the sort of man who would bring ruination to those around him, but he was full of humor and could turn the dullest campfire into a good time. He was a knee slapping sport, always looking to stir something up.

  Though he liked him, Skinner Jake couldn't deny that Cossatot Jim was the sort who borrowed trouble whenever none could be found. Well, Cossatot Jim borrowed trouble for the buffalo hunting party, and they was now all dead because of it.

  Cossatot Jim brought down the wrath of the Comanche upon the entire outfit. Skinner Jake expected that whatever else happened, the Comanche had done for Cossatot Jim. And he probably deserved whatever the Comanche gave him.

  When the first bit of blue light from the east touched the night sky, Skinner Jake could still hear the cattle. Exhausted, thirsting to death, and with an ache in his belly, he waited until the light grew and shapes began to appear on the horizon. A mile in front of him, maybe more, Skinner Jake saw the plain moving, like a slow dance of the earth. He stood and started walking toward it. If his ears deceived him through the night, then his eyes now deceived him in the morning.

  Up ahead, Skinner Jake saw cattle spread out in a wide herd, the steers moving from one clump of grass to another. It looked for all the world like a cattle drive.

  A desperation overtook him as he lumbered forward. He stumbled and caught himself, his eyes fixed upon the herd of steers. More light filled the sky, and like a solid shadow at the top of a knoll, Skinner Jake could see the silhouette of a covered wagon.

  "Help!" he called out, but his swollen, dry throat couldn't get enough volume for him to even hear himself.

  If he had lost his mind and there were no cattle and there was no wagon, that was okay. He would die anyway. And if it was all just a mirage, just an imagining of a crazy man, at least he would die imagining himself being rescued.

  "Help!" Skinner Jake cried out again.

  And then a rider was coming toward him, the horse bounding over the plain. The rider's face was covered with a bandanna, and he wore a tall hat atop his head.

  Skinner Jake waved his arms furiously at the rider before falling over into the sandy dirt.

  -5-

  Sancho Biscuit made space in the back of the wagon, and O'Toole and Fitz lifted the man onto a pallet of bedrolls. They dipped a cloth in the water barrel and wetted his lips and mouth.

  "Do what you can for him, but don't linger here," Rab Sinclair said. "Then catch up to others as fast as you can. I ain't pleased about stringing us out across this plain."

  Already the vaqueros had gotten the cattle moving. Vazquez and Kuwatee had ridden up ahead to watch for trouble.

  Carlos, Miguel, and Jorge were pushing the steers forward. The critters were willing to move because the grass here was poor and there was no water.

  Caleb had not yet loosed the horses, and he was standing nearby watching as Sancho nursed the man.

  "You think he's one of them buff hunters?" Caleb asked.

  "Of course he is," Fitz said. "No other white man is just wandering around alone out here."

  "How did he find us?" Caleb asked.

  "We ain't easy to miss," O'Toole said. "We're like a big, moving target out here. Anyone who wants to find us will find us easy. Look at how them cows have tore up th
e land behind us, eating and stomping on everything. We've blazed a clearer trail than a tornado would."

  If the Comanche came, Caleb Morgan knew how O'Toole and Fitz would respond. Vazquez and Kuwatee, too. They were fighters, all four of them. They carried 15-shot Winchester Yellow Boy rifles in leather scabbards strapped to their saddles and six-shooter Colts on their hips. Vazquez even had a pair of Colt Army conversions that took cartridge bullets like a rifle instead of cap-and-ball. Vazquez was a tough old lawman. O'Toole was an Indian fighter from way back. Fitz was a war hero. No one really knew about the half breed, but no one doubted that he was tough as iron.

  The Vaqueros didn't carry guns, not while they were herding the cattle, but they all had rifles and six-shooters in Sancho's wagon. But they would fight.

  Even Sancho carried a rifle and a six-shooter within arm's reach in his driver's box.

  But if the Comanche came, Caleb did not know if the rest of the outfit could count on him. He had so much fear after seeing those men scalped. He knew such things happened, but the only other time Caleb had ever seen violent death face-to-face, he had cowered.

  He thought of the man who hid under the tarp and wondered if this was the man now in the back of Sancho's wagon.

  "I'm going to ride our backtrail," Rab said. "We didn't see any sign of the Comanche yesterday, but if this man caught up to us in the dark, the Comanche might have also."

  Rab swung himself into the saddle of the blue roan, wheeled the horse and started back east, following the wide path the cattle had made.

  When Caleb thought of Rab Sinclair, he was always on Cromwell's back. The blue roan seemed as much a part of Rab as his right arm or his left leg. When he rode other horses in the remuda, he never looked quite right.

  "Get them hawsses moving," O'Toole called at Caleb. "I want to get off this godforsaken plain as fast as we can."

  "You having regrets about signing on for this, O'Toole?" Fitz teased.

  O'Toole grumbled a bit under his breath. "You'll have regrets yourself if them Comanche come upon us," O'Toole said. "I fought them when I was with the cavalry, and it's no game."

  Fitz scoffed. "I've stood up to the Rebel Yell, I'll stand up to the Comanche. Don't you forget, I was with Custer at Gettysburg."

  "This ain't Gettysburg," O'Toole said. "And the Comanche ain't going to put you in Andersonville if they catch you."

  "They cooked a man's privates when they attacked them buffalo hunters," Caleb interjected.

  "Don't scare the Yankee, boy," O'Toole said with a laugh.

  "You're a Texan, aren't you, O'Toole. Did you fight in the War?"

  "Aye, I'm a Texan. My father and my brothers fought in the war, but I was a wee bit young. They left me home to tend to my mother and our farm. I did some fighting with the home guard against the Indians, and then took up with the cavalry when the war was over."

  Fitz left it alone at that. He knew better than to prod Confederate pride too far. He liked O'Toole and had enjoyed riding along with him, and if a fight came he didn't want to be at odds with one of the men who'd be making a stand with him.

  "Hurry them horses," Fitz said to Caleb. "O'Toole is right, of course. Another week or so, and we'll be home."

  Caleb finishing getting the horses unstaked. He left a bridle and lead on each horse, the leads looped and draped onto their backs to keep from being a nuisance to the animals. The stakes that he used to picket the horses went into the chuck wagon.

  When he was finished, Caleb started to drive the horses behind the cattle. It was slow going. The horses veered off in search of grass that the cattle had not yet consumed or tamped down, and Caleb allowed them to veer.

  The vaqueros were experts with their cattle, and only once on the trip so far did Caleb have to push a stray steer back up into the herd.

  It seemed to him that the cattle were moving faster this morning. He wondered if Carlos, or maybe Vazquez, was driving them at a quicker pace because of the threat of Comanche.

  With the morning sun on his back, Caleb warmed up fast enough. The breeze at night was chilly, and mornings on the Llano Estacado were unpleasantly cold. But the daytime wind blew warm, and the sun by afternoon would be baking hot.

  After some while, Sancho drove his wagon on past Caleb and the horses, trailing his spare mules behind the wagon.

  "He wake up yet?" Caleb called.

  "Not much," Sancho responded. "We gave him a little water and he passed out again."

  Caleb wanted to know if the man they rescued was the man who hid under the tarp or the one who dug his way into the embankment.

  Caleb looked back over his shoulder and saw O'Toole and Fitz riding along behind. They were the rearguard, presumably they would be the first ones to see the Comanche, unless Rab encountered them.

  If the Comanche did attack, O'Toole or Fitz, one of them, would fire a warning shot into the air. At that point, Caleb would abandon the horses and ride forward to the wagon where there were guns and shells. Everyone, the vaqueros, the rearguard, Vazquez and Kuwatee the half-breed up at the front, they would all converge on Sancho Biscuit's wagon.

  Animals — horses and cattle — could be rounded up later. Surviving the fight was more important.

  As they went on, Caleb kept checking over his shoulder. O'Toole and Fitz were always back there. Sometimes they rode far out to the north or south. Sometimes they just sat their horses, watching behind them. But they were always in sight, and that was a comfort to Caleb.

  But he did not see Rab Sinclair and the blue roan.

  It was Rab's way.

  Rab enjoyed the evenings by the campfire with the other men. He liked the camaraderie of the trail ride. He loved to scout and ride over long distances in the saddle.

  But in his heart, Rab Sinclair could never be a true rancher. He wasn't a cowpuncher. He had no love for herding and moving steers. The going was too slow. The steers too noisy. The trail too dusty. When Rab disappeared over the horizon to scout, Caleb believed it was as much to get away from the trail drive as it was to watch for Comanche or other threats.

  ***

  The blue roan slid easily down the side of the steep, rocky incline.

  "You are a sure-footed old biter," Rab said, patting the roan's neck. Cromwell shook his black mane and black face at the compliment, as if to say that managing the slope had been a small thing and not worthy of praise.

  Having ridden out of sight of the cattle, Rab turned the horse south until they came to a deep wash.

  Having ridden all over this territory and seen some things that defied explanation, Rab Sinclair understood that in other times this world must have been a very different place.

  Here, for instance, he could see the unmistakable evidence that vast currents of water had cut deep grooves into this land that was now so dry. He rode down through the canyon cut in the vast emptiness of the Llano Estacado. From half a mile away he couldn't even see the canyon, it looked simply like a low spot. Now, down inside, Rab rode past thick brush and saw ahead of him a small stand of cottonwoods.

  He led Cromwell over to the trees, and there he found small pools of water. Rab slid down out of the saddle and tasted the water. It was fresh enough — rain water held in rock basins.

  Rab dipped his canteen down into the water and then let the horse drink.

  Here in the canyon, the wind did not whip away the water, and beneath the cottonwoods the sun did not evaporate it all away.

  The cottonwoods, weeds, and brush blinded Sinclair from seeing into the rest of the canyon.

  Cromwell began to drink, but with a jerk, the horse lifted his head and sniffed at the air. Rab put out a hand and touched the horse's neck, making a soft shushing noise.

  And then Rab heard something — a voice speaking through the trees and brush.

  It was not Comanche. As a child, Rab Sinclair lived among the tribes people. Mostly he lived with the Cheyenne and Ute, but he'd spent time with most tribes, including the Comanche and Apache. Rab's Scottish fa
ther considered himself to be a missionary of sorts. Mostly, the Indians believed he was insane. But Parson Sinclair, as he was sometimes called, moved freely among the tribes, even when the tribes were at war with each other or at war with whites. Rab always suspected his father had a hankering for squaws, and there was ample evidence for it.

  So in his youth, Rab had picked up some of the tribes' languages. He spoke a little Ute and a little Cheyenne, and he could make himself understood to the Cherokee. They'd never lived long enough with the Comanche or Apache that Rab had any of their words, but he recognized their talk when he heard it.

  The words coming to him through the cottonwoods and brush were English words spoken by a white man.

  There had been two survivors from the buffalo hunters. One was in the back of Sancho's wagon, unconscious and just hanging to life. But it now appeared the other was here, in this canyon, surviving on the water that pooled below the trees.

  The roan sniffed at the air and snorted.

  At the sound of the horse, the voice beyond the cottonwoods stopped speaking.

  Rab took Cromwell's lead and walked him a ways back up the canyon until they reached a slope the horse could manage.

  "Up you go," Rab whispered to the horse, and Cromwell pushed off and bounded up the slope. Rab climbed up behind the horse.

  At the top of the hill he slid the Yellow Boy rifle from its scabbard and dropped the lever to chamber one of the big .44 rounds.

  From his vantage he could see the tops of the cottonwoods poking out of the rim of the canyon. There, the canyon made a bend back to the east. Somewhere in that bend, beyond the stand of cottonwoods, was where the voice had come from.

  Rab dropped Cromwell's lead in a patch of grass. Unless there was some threat, the horse would stand for a ground tie.

  Sinclair edged along the rim of the canyon, keeping far enough away that if there were people down in the canyon they would not see him. He reached the bend, and there he squatted down low and moved slowly up to the rim.