A Vast and Desolate Land

by Robert Peecher

  The slope here was steep and dropped as much as thirty feet. No man would easily get out of the canyon at this place.

  Making sure of the ground beneath him so that he didn't cause a rock slide, Rab craned his neck to look down over the rim. There he saw one sole man, crouched into a narrow cut in the side of the canyon. The man carried a long gun and clutched it tight against him.

  He'd heard Cromwell, and the horse had spooked him.

  "Yo!" Rab called out.

  The man jumped with fright, leaving the safety of the cut. He spun round, seeking the source of the voice, and raised up his rifle. Rab was all but certain that the gun was unloaded. When they found the other man out on the plains he carried a Sharps rifle, but he had now powder and no bullets. Rab thought for sure this man would be equally without ammunition.

  "You ain't no Injun!" the stranger in the canyon shouted.

  "No, I ain't," Rab said.

  "What in hell are you doing here?"

  "Driving Texas cattle into New Mexico," Rab said. "I reckon the better question is what are you doing down in that canyon talking to yourself?"

  "I was attacked," the man said. He was jumpy for lack of food, probably more than a little scared. His eyes were wild and his manner skittish.

  "You with them buff runners we seen back a ways, slaughtered by Comanche?"

  "All of 'em killed," the man said.

  "Not all," Rab said. "We picked up another survivor."

  The man's wild eyes rolled around like the devil.

  "Who was it?"

  Rab shook his head. "Don't know. He come up on us this morning but collapsed. Wind whipped, thirsty, and about half starved. You seem to be okay."

  "I ain't had nothin' substantial to eat for a couple of days, but I found water here."

  Every bit of Rab Sinclair's good judgment told him to leave this man in the canyon and let him find his own way out. The man's skittish behavior and wild eyes set uneasy with the man who'd traveled so much of the West and had met so many different kinds.

  All the same, Rab knew that leaving a man out here alone in this desolate and empty place was as good as killing him.

  "We best get you up out of there. It's a long walk to the chuck wagon, and I ain't got but the one hawss."

  "We can ride double," the man said.

  "No, we cannot," Rab said.

  Sinclair stood up and gave a piercing whistle that cut across the wind, and from a distance he saw the blue roan lift its black head.

  "Hiyaw!" Sinclair called out, and the horse galloped toward him.

  Rab patted the roan's neck and fetched a broken peppermint stick from his pocket and gave it to the horse. He expected the horse to obey him without treats, but he sometimes gave rewards to make sure that the horse always came at a whistle and a call.

  He unloosed his lariat from the saddle.

  "You strong enough to climb?"

  "I'm strong enough to climb, but I don't know how far I can walk. Maybe we switch off riding?"

  Rab tossed one end of the rope down into the canyon, swung himself into his saddle and looped the other end of the lariat around the saddle horn. The lariat was about forty-five feet, plenty long enough for the man in the canyon to loop it around himself.

  "Start climbing," Rab called down, and he urged Cromwell forward so that the horse pulled the man as he walked up out of the canyon.

  "My name's Rab Sinclair."

  Rab watched the man to see if there was recognition that went across his face. Rab saw none. Sometimes folks had heard of him because he'd done a good bit of traveling and made something of a reputation. Sinclair liked it best, though, when folks didn't show recognition at his name. Depending who they'd talked to, sometimes folks who didn't know him formed a poor opinion of him.

  "They call me Cossatot Jim."

  Rab looped the lariat back up while he sat the horse.

  "That's quite a handle. Your mama give you that name?"

  "She called me James. I come from down on the Cossatot River in Arkansas. So it come to Cossatot Jim some years ago."

  "My folks are to the west. You follow me as far as you can see me. If you lose sight of me, you follow the swatch the steers have made."

  "You ain't gonna let me ride?" Cossatot Jim asked.

  "I ain't," Rab said. "It's not my fault you're out here without a hawss, and this hawss, especially, don't take to strangers. He'd buck you off and stamp your head before he'd carry you ten yards."

  Cossatot Jim grumbled some about that, but Rab Sinclair paid him no attention. The man was fit enough, so Rab squeezed his knees and Cromwell started off west at a trot.

  Rab swung around in the saddle one time just to be sure there were no Comanche out on the open plains. A gnawing in his gut told him it was a mistake to help this man, but he didn't know how he could leave him here.

  ***

  "They come on us all of a sudden," Cossatot Jim said.

  The horses were picketed and the men of the trail drive were gathered near the chuck wagon for their supper. Sancho Biscuit set the skillets on the drop table at the back of the wagon. The men dished up their own plates from skillets. The first man they'd found, the one Cossatot Jim identified as Skinner Jake, was still unconscious. Sancho dabbed a wet cloth on his lips, but the man was suffering from dehydration and exhaustion, and no one in the outfit was giving Skinner Jake good odds of living long enough to get to New Mexico.

  When they'd all taken seats around the low coals of the campfire, Cossatot Jim told his story.

  "I reckon some of us was dead before we even knowed the Comanche was attacking. They was two low ridges that formed a kind of V, and that why we'd set camp there. We thought them ridges might break the wind a bit for us, cause the nights was gettin' so cold.

  "But them Injuns came from both sides of them ridges, hid almost all the way up to our camp. And when they come, they come mounted and shrieking like a band of Devil's demons from the gates of Hell."

  "I've seen the Comanche attack quick like that. How did you survive it?" O'Toole asked.

  Cossatot Jim dropped his eyes. "I ain't proud to say what I done. I was over by one of the wagons. We'd pulled the canvas off the top of the wagon, thinking on making a windbreak with it. So I was holding it in my hands, and I just wrapped it over me and fell to the ground. I can't say why they didn't find me. But from up under that canvas I could hear them killing the others — not something I'll ever forget. Shrieking Injuns, screaming men being tortured to death. It was Hell on earth, I'll tell you that. Hell on earth."

  Cossatot Jim sat quiet for a moment, and the other men respected the silence. They'd all endured something similar at one time or another.

  Fitz, in the war, had seen plenty of carnage. It was a hard thing on a man to see so many friends and strangers all in one place, all dying or suffering. At Gettysburg, the fighting was so vicious in places that hundreds of men were alive one moment and dead the next.

  O'Toole had seen enough of it, fighting the Comanche in Texas.

  Vazquez, for his part, had fought Apache raiding parties and had shot it out with outlaws.

  Kuwatee had fought everyone. Whites and Indians, alike. Sometimes at the same time. He was a man without allies.

  No one in the outfit really knew what the vaqueros had seen or not seen. Though they lived near Las Vegas, they kept mostly to themselves in communities of Mexicans who had lived in that place long before New Mexico was a territory of the United States. But a man didn't move on these plains or among the mountains without fighting. Whether he was fighting the wind or the heat or the cold, coyotes, or Indians, fighting was part of life for a man of the West.

  Even Caleb Morgan, who was still young and had never engaged in battle, had watched people he cared for die. First his father, and then his mother, and then the old man who cared for him — murdered by outlaws right in front of him.

  "They come on us with arrows and lances, but a couple of them had rifles, too," Cossatot Jim said. "I didn't
move the whole time. I just stayed under that canvas and hoped they wouldn't find me. And when it was silent for a while, I poked my head out, and I saw that they was all gone, and all the other boys in my outfit was dead. Or so I thought. The trail them Injuns left went to the east, so I started walking to the west. Anyway that would take me away from them was the best way, so far as I could see."

  "You were lucky to find that canyon," Rab said. "Most men out here would die of thirst."

  "I was lucky, that's so," Cossatot Jim agreed.

  "Why they attack?" Kuwatee asked, breaking his silence for the first time.

  Cossatot Jim eyed the half-breed.

  "They attacked on account of them being Comanche," Cossatot Jim said. "That's what Comanche do. They surprise you and attack you for no reason at all whatsoever."

  Kuwatee glanced at Rab Sinclair and gave a tiny, subtle shake of his head.

  That shake of the head confirmed for Rab what he already had guessed. Often, a white man did not understand the reasons why the Comanche did what they did, but the Comanche seldom failed to have a reason. They could be vicious and sometimes comprehensive, but they were seldom indiscriminate.

  "You gave no offense to them?" Rab asked.

  "None at all," Cossatot Jim said with a glance at Skinner Jake, laid out on a bedroll near the wagon. "We didn't do nothing to provoke. I reckon it was enough that we was just cutting across their hunting ground."

  "Could be," Rab said. "They've surely seen us, or signs of us, and yet they've left us alone."

  "Well, you ain't home, yet," Cossatot Jim said.

  -6-

  The Comanche scouts sat their horses, just visible on the northeastern horizon.

  "Wind blowin' sand in your face, it's hard to judge," O'Toole said. "Maybe two miles off?"

  "Maybe," Fitz said. "I would call it closer to three miles, but it's hard to say."

  O'Toole spotted them first. They'd been hard to see. He thought they might just be a bush or something. From the initial distance, they looked like one black mass out on the horizon. But as he rode a little closer, reaching the extremity of the path the steers were cutting, he saw one of the horses move.

  "Hell," he said to himself. "Bushes don't take steps."

  So O'Toole sat his horse and watched them, and after a while Fitz rode up and joined him.

  "Out yonder," O'Toole said, pointing. "A couple of mounted men. I'd bet my right arm they're Comanche scouts."

  Fitz discounted them as a shrub of some kind, but then he too saw one of the horses shift.

  The two veterans watched the two Comanche scouts, and the two Comanche scouts kept watching the two veterans.

  "What do ye think they're up to?" O'Toole asked.

  "Testing us," Fitz said. "They've counted our numbers, they know our strength. Now they're testing to see how we react. They've let us see them. They want us to know they're there."

  "I've half a mind to ride up and put fifteen shots from the Yellow Boy down their throats, I'll tell ye that," O'Toole said.

  As he spoke, Rab Sinclair rode up to them.

  "I reckon there's a dozen more of them laying on their bellies between us and them two scouts," Rab asked. "O'Toole, you'd never get close enough to the scouts to pull your trigger."

  "You seen 'em, too?" O'Toole asked.

  "Yep."

  "So what do we do, Rabbie?" Fitz asked.

  Rab sucked his back teeth and shook his head.

  "We keep them doggies moving," Rab said. "We keep 'em pointed toward Las Vegas. We get them cattle and ourselves home as fast as we can, and we leave them Comanche be."

  "Leave 'em be?" O'Toole said. "Likely enough they ain't going to leave us be."

  Rab nodded thoughtfully.

  "We should try to compress the cattle some," Rab said. "It's hard because there ain't enough grazing out here. I'm going to have Sancho draw back and stay closer to you rather than going on up ahead. Right now we're riding in a diamond around the cattle, but I'm going to have Kuwatee and Vazquez ride out on the sides. Y'all stay in the back, but position yourselves generally near to them. That gives us more of an open box shape with the cattle coming out at the top. I'll stay up at point and be sure nothing happens in front of us. If the Comanche attack, the fight will be at the back. And that way, if the cattle stampede, at least they will stampede in the direction we want them to go."

  O'Toole laughed. "And they won't stamp us down while we're trying to fight the Comanche."

  Rab grinned, though his bandanna hid the smile. "Yep. That, too."

  "You think they'll attack us?" Fitz asked.

  "They'll attack," O'Toole said.

  Fitz ignored O'Toole. Of course O'Toole thought they would attack. As a one-time Indian fighter, that's all he knew of the Comanche. "You said last night they ain't indiscriminate. We've caused no trouble for 'em."

  Rab shrugged his shoulders. "They ain't indiscriminate, but sometimes what offends a Comanche takes some puzzling to figure out. We might be grazing our cattle right through the middle of their hunting grounds. Or maybe some canyon we passed by is a holy place for them where the spirits of their ancestors congregate. Or maybe they can smell O'Toole ten miles away."

  Fitz laughed.

  "There ain't nothing wrong with the way I smell," O'Toole said bitterly.

  "We may have offended without knowing it, is my point," Rab continued. "With Comanche, it's best to expect that we somehow made them angry and be prepared for their response."

  Rab wheeled his horse. Cromwell, the blue roan, was back in the remuda today, and Rab was riding a chocolate-colored bay with a raven black mane.

  "Don't linger too long back here," Rab said. "You'll start to look like a target instead of a curiosity."

  The two veterans sat their horses a while longer, watching the motionless black specks out on the horizon.

  "You think he's right, that there's a dozen of them on the ground between here and there?" Fitz said.

  "Probably two dozen, and they'll lay there all day if they have to just to have the chance of taking your scalp."

  The two men turned their horses and started back up toward the rest of the outfit.

  Even as they rode, they saw Vazquez and Kuwatee falling back and taking up a position at the far left and right of the trail drive. Sancho wheeled his wagon out of the way to allow the cattle to pass while the vaqueros herded the cattle into a tighter position.

  Caleb already had spent the day keeping the horses tight together. He had pushed them out a ways past where the cattle were grazing so that even in in a tighter space they would have more grass.

  Fitz rode a little closer to where Caleb grazed the remuda.

  It took the better part of an hour, but when the cattle passed Sancho Biscuit's wagon, the old cook turned his mules into the wake of the cattle.

  Cossatot Jim walked not far from the wagon.

  The others in the outfit did not argue, but they were surprised when Rab Sinclair refused Cossatot Jim a horse. And then refused him a ride on the wagon. And then refused to loan him a weapon.

  Jim's rifle — like the one Skinner Jake carried — was never loaded when the Comanche attacked the buffalo hunting party. Rab was firm when Cossatot Jim began asking for the loan of horse and gun.

  "You can walk with us, and we'll share our food and water because it's the decent thing to do. But this ain't a rescue party. Every horse and every gun we've brought with us has a job. None of them are extra. And they'll remain employed with us as they were intended."

  "Surely you'll let me ride in the wagon," Cossatot Jim said.

  "I'll not," Rab said. "We already have an extra man in the wagon, and I'll not make it two."

  The one kindness Rab did spare the man was that Rab found an extra pair of moccasins he'd brought along and let Cossatot Jim have those, even though they were a mite big on his feet.

  With the outfit newly positioned, mostly to the rear of the cattle, Rab Sinclair was now the one who would have to ride t
he farthest and fastest if it came time to make a stand. The others had short distances to fall back to Sancho's wagon.

  But if the Comanche attacked, Rab Sinclair wasn't likely to fall back and take up a defensive position, anyway. It wasn't his style.

  The easy going pioneer had a reputation for being slow to anger, but when he got there, he came on hard.

  The one concession Rab made to the Comanche was that he took up an extra box of .44 cartridges from Sancho's wagon and dropped those into his saddlebag.

  ***

  "Can I confess something to you?" Caleb said.

  He used a rock a little bigger than his fist to drive the stake into the ground, picketing the last of the horses. Rab Sinclair was standing nearby, scratching the blue roan's neck.

  "Sure, Caleb," Rab said.

  "I'm about scared as hell, Rab," Caleb said.

  "Ain't no shame in bein' scared," Rab said. "Them Comanche don't come to play. Only a fool wouldn't take them serious."

  Caleb stood up and stretched his back. He was stiff and sore all over. Unlike the other men in the outfit, most of Caleb's nights were spent in a bed with a mattress of some kind, and sleeping on the hard ground and sitting all day in the saddle was testing foreign muscles.

  "But you ain't scared," Caleb said.

  Rab pulled the bandanna down from his face and unscrewed the cap to his canteen. He took a big drink of the water. It tasted of metal from having sat so long in the canteen.

  "I'm a mite nervous," Rab said. "But I've seen an awful lot to start getting scared now. The important thing is what you do with the fear. Do you control it? Or does it control you?"

  "How do I know which is which?" Caleb asked.

  "Well, if you jump on a hawss and ride off, that's the fear controlling you. If you lay down in your bedroll and toss and turn and don't get the sleep you need to be alert and ready the next day, that's the fear controlling you. But if you stand with the men in your outfit, you've got control over your fear. If you keep yourself fresh and ready to fight if you have to, that's you controlling the fear. If the time comes that we have to fight, if you chamber a round, take aim and pull the trigger, and you keep on doing that, then you're controlling your fear."