The Amarillo Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “Yeah. Any objection?”

  “Nope. I was hopin’ to run a sizable herd up to the railhead one day, though.”

  “You will, Jules. Maybe next spring.”

  “I gather we’re headin’ back pretty quick.”

  “No use dawdlin’,” Doc said.

  “See them black clouds yonder, Doc?”

  “Yeah, there’s a whale of a storm a-comin’.”

  “More cold winds. We’re liable to be caught out in the open right in the middle of it.”

  “Likely.”

  “We could bunk up at Jared’s for the night.”

  “I got to get back home, Jules. I don’t like Ethyl bein’ by herself with them two Gallegos boys on the loose.”

  “They wouldn’t hurt no woman,” Jules said. When Doc just glared at him, Jules said: “Would they?”

  “I just don’t know what them boys would do. They might have no sense, seein’ as two of their brothers are dead. Both at my hands. They might want blood for blood.”

  “Serious?”

  “Real serious,” Doc said, and looked again at the sky. He shivered involuntarily. He could almost feel the cold and the wet that was to come. There was an angry sky to the west, and from the looks of the clouds, they were floating toward them. If they could cross the Canadian before nightfall, they might find someplace high and dry to spend the night.

  From experience he knew they could not seek shelter in an arroyo or a ravine. Many a cowman had died in flash floods that ravaged Texas during the heavy rains. It was spring and those rains could be frog stranglers, he knew. Yes, they could bunk the night at Jared’s, but it was one more night away from his home and he was concerned, if not worried, about Ethyl. Oh, he had good men still at the ranch, but with a couple of hotheaded Mexicans bent on revenge, there was no telling what they would do.

  He had made up his mind. They would head back home right away.

  He just hoped the storm was slow-moving and would stay north of them long after nightfall.

  The sun disappeared behind a new phalanx of black thunderheads and they seemed to grow larger as he waited for Paco and his men to come for his herd. He could almost smell rain and a moment later, the breeze quickened and splashed against his face.

  The soft wind carried whispers of rain in its throat and its fingers were already turning cold when Jules and three cowhands appeared on the horizon, heading their way.

  Doc raised a hand in greeting.

  “Get ready, boys,” he hollered to Dale and Randy. “We’re headin’ for home in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  They didn’t answer, but looked at Doc with crestfallen faces.

  Jules snorted.

  “They don’t like leavin’ any more’n I do,” he said.

  Doc said nothing. He didn’t want an argument or mutiny from his men. Let them grumble and moan. They all had slickers and had already weathered a cold morning. One more night or two on the trail wouldn’t kill them. And he was, as Jared had said, still a tough old coot.

  Chapter 10

  Miles soaked in the wooden tub on his back porch. Caroline kept adding scalding hot water to the soapy mix, as her husband immersed himself in the suds, his head lolled back, the stub of an unlit cigar in his mouth. He didn’t notice how blanched her face was, nor how nervously she trotted back and forth from the kitchen with the steam kettle.

  “That’s enough hot water,” he told her when she poured the sixth pot into the tub.

  “I should think so, Miles. You’ve been soaking for more than a half hour. Probably scrubbed yourself raw.”

  “Oh, I’m clean as a whistle,” he said. “It’s my muscles that needed the hot water.”

  “Feel better now?” she said, without really caring how he felt.

  “Some.”

  “You’re leaving early in the morning for Kansas?” she asked.

  “Before sunup. Herd’s all gathered and bedded down. Nearly two thousand head of whitefaces, well, about eighteen hundred head, more or less.”

  “Don’t wake me up when you go,” she said, handing him a towel as he stood up, his body covered with soap bubbles. She turned away to keep from looking at his nakedness and held the bath towel at arm’s length.

  Miles took the towel and stepped out of the tub onto a small Mexican throw rug of rope woven into ovals. He dripped soapy water onto the manila rug as Caroline stepped away and stood in the doorway, looking out beyond the porch at the pump and the water trough some yards away from the house. The sky was a velvet black, littered with billions of sparkling stars. Fireflies streaked over the empty field, winking off and on like tiny golden suns.

  “Your clothes are on the chair,” she said, and left the porch.

  Miles hummed as he dried himself with the towel. The song was “Oh! Susanna,” and he was slightly off-key. He could hear Caroline banging pots in the kitchen and his stomach roiled with hunger. It had been a long, hard day rounding up better than fifteen hundred head of cattle, while some of the hands marked them with trail brands for the drive to Salina. He used the same brand as his father had, since they were all going to be part of a single herd. The roundup had gone smoothly because he had good hands. They left out the mothers with young calves, the yearlings, and the two-year-olds. He was satisfied that they had good fat beef stock to drive to the railhead in Kansas.

  Caroline had set the table and when he sat down, she brought in platters of beef and a bowl of mashed potatoes, a porcelain tureen of gravy and warm glasses of tea. Then she set a boat of greens near his plate. He tucked a napkin over his shirt and picked up his knife and fork.

  “I’ll get a ladle for the gravy,” she said, and left the room while he piled food on his plate.

  When she returned, he had spooned a crater in his potatoes. She handed him the ladle and he poured gravy into the depression. Caroline sat down and tied a large napkin around her neck. The lamp in the center of the table flickered with yellow light and the table danced with swimming shadows that slid around like scraps of black felt or floating bat wings.

  “You don’t want to see me off, Caroline? This is kind of a historic drive up to Kansas. For me anyway.”

  “I don’t want to look at a bunch of smelly cows dropping their pies and clumps of offal while you ride off into the sunrise,” she said.

  “Them cows is our livelihood, honey.”

  “Oooh,” she exclaimed, “pardon me. They might mean money to you, but to me they’re just a stinky bunch of dumb cattle leaving smelling plops all over the ground.”

  “You knew I was a cowman when you married me,” he said as he forked a chunk of steak into his mouth.

  “I knew you raised cattle, but I thought you had men to work for you. Sometimes when you come in at night, you reek of cow dung.”

  “That’s money you smell, darling. Greenbacks on the hoof.”

  “I just didn’t know anything about cattle ranching, Miles. I have to drown myself in perfume so I won’t smell what you bring into the house.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, darlin’.”

  “You know how I feel?” She laughed ironically. “You haven’t the least idea.”

  “Maybe you ought to get to know our cows better,” he said. He masticated the beef into pulp, but did not see the fierce glare in Caroline’s blue eyes. They were in shadow, as she intended them to be.

  Caroline picked at her food as if she were preoccupied with other thoughts. She was. She took dainty bites and seemed to be forming unspoken words in between swallows of meat and potatoes.

  “When you get back with some money, Miles,” she said, “maybe I can get a maid to help me with the chores.”

  “We never had a maid,” he said.

  “When are you going to finish that extra room? The house is too small and the back porch needs to have a screen on it. Some evenings the mosquitoes eat me alive.”

  “I can’t spare nobody right now to finish off that room.” They lived in a small frame house that Miles envi
sioned would grow as their fortunes increased. The extra room was framed in and on a solid foundation, but it had no walls and only part of a roof. He had done most of the work himself on those late afternoons when he had come home early.

  “Who all are you taking with you to Kansas?” she asked, finally, as she finished eating and sat there sipping her tea.

  “Pa left me Tad Rankin, who’s going to be trail boss. And I’ll take Joadie Lee and Curly Bob and that kid from Denver, Earl Dawson. I’ll probably need Carey Newgate to ride drag.”

  “You’re taking Earl Dawson?”

  “Yep. He needs the experience.”

  “But I could use him around here. He was helping me with that lintel over the front door and he said he could work on that extra room while you’re gone.”

  Miles looked up at her, but Caroline leaned back in her chair so that her face was in shadow, just above the circle of lamplight. “When was Earl fixin’ that lintel?”

  “Today. For a little while.”

  “He was supposed to be working the gather.”

  “He just happened by and I asked him if he could fix it,” she said.

  “Well, you don’t do no more of that. Earl’s a cowhand, not a carpenter.”

  “He did a pretty good job.”

  “I didn’t know the lintel was broke.”

  “You never know anything about this house or what I do all day, Miles.”

  “You got your work and I got mine.”

  She untied her napkin and threw it down on her plate. She rose from her chair. The legs scraped on the hardwood floor with a wrenching squeak. “I got too much work, what with the dust and the wind and the cows to milk, the hogs to slop. I need a maid and you’re too cheap to get me one.”

  Miles looked up from his plate. He was almost finished eating, but Caroline’s tirade caught him by surprise.

  “You ain’t complained before now,” he said. “Now you need a carpenter and a maid. What else?”

  “I need a husband with regular hours, Miles. Sometimes you don’t get home until after midnight and sometimes you camp out with your men and I don’t know if you’re alive or dead.”

  She was about to break into tears. Miles scraped his plate, took one last dollop of potatoes and gravy, washed it down with tea, and stood up, his napkin stained and dripping from his collar like a bib.

  “Damn it, Caroline, you pick the damnedest time to raise a ruckus about what I do and how overworked you are. I’ll be gone for better’n a month on this drive and you got to blow your stack at me the night before I leave.”

  She glared at him. “Most of the time you’re too tired to talk to me when you come home. Especially during spring roundup.”

  “I talk,” he said with a stubborn tone in his voice.

  “You talk about cows and coyotes.”

  “What about in our bed?” he asked. “I ain’t talkin’ about cows then.”

  “No,” she said. “You hardly talk at all.”

  “What in hell does that mean?” His ire rose in him as her own voice grew to a shrill pitch.

  “I just hear you grunt and moan and when you’re finished you turn over and go to sleep. Leaving me unsatisfied.”

  “Unsatisfied? What are you, a damned harlot? Ain’t once a night enough for you?” He started toward her, but she backed away.

  Then her voice softened. “Not always. Sometimes you go off and leave me behind,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “You satisfy yourself. Not me.”

  “Well, I don’t know how I can do more’n what I do with you. I give you all I got.”

  She bit her lip.

  She wanted to tell him that sometimes she yearned for more, especially afterward. She wanted him to hold her and cuddle her, but he was often too tired to do more than service himself and then fall asleep. She didn’t say it then, though, and it was just another thing she kept to herself.

  Like so many other little things that annoyed her about her husband.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m too tired myself tonight to argue with you. I just want a little consideration now and then, is all.”

  He walked to her and put a hand on her hair. He stroked the strands and looked at her as if she were a child.

  “I’m sorry, darlin’,” he said. “I’ll try harder to please you. When I get back from this drive, things will be different. A lot different.”

  “Promise?” she said, and stretched her neck to kiss him.

  “I promise,” he said. He kissed her and then broke away with a sigh.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “We’d better not get started, Caroline. I got a lot to do in the mornin’ and . . .”

  She drew in several deep breaths. Her eyes were smoldering with repressed anger.

  “Leave Earl here,” she said as he walked toward the bedroom. He unbuttoned his shirt as he walked out of the small dining room.

  “All right,” he said as he turned into their bedroom.

  The minute he said it he wondered if he wasn’t making a mistake. Earl was a good cowman and showed much promise. If he could help Caroline and do some of the work for her, well, he could spare him. But at the back shelf of his mind was the nagging thought that something was not quite right about her request.

  He just couldn’t put his finger on it right at that moment.

  Besides, he was eager to get the herd moving in the morning. He relished the thought of taking cattle across new country and to a new town. He wanted the money, but he also wanted to make his father proud of him. He was so excited he was ready to whoop and holler, but he was also very tired and knew it was going to be hard as hell to get up before dawn, saddle up, and join his men before the sun even cleared the horizon.

  He fell asleep as soon as he stretched out on the bed and pulled the coverlet over him.

  Outside, a pack of coyotes chorused in the distance, but he never heard them. Caroline sat up for a long time after she washed and dried the dishes and put all the food away.

  She smiled to herself while she sat in her chair in the front room, moonlight drenching the front porch and staining the grass with a dull silver sheen. It was peaceful there and tomorrow Miles would be gone for more than a month.

  And she would have Earl Dawson to share her bed with no one the wiser.

  Chapter 11

  Jorge Gallegos had no more tears for his dead brother Miguel. He and Carlos had been riding back to Amarillo for two long days and a night. The body had begun to ripen immediately after they found him lying next to his grieving horse, stripped of his gun belt, his rifle missing. Carlos was inconsolable and was still sniffling when they approached the adobe dwelling where they lived with their mother, Esperanza, on sixteen hectares of land on the eastern outskirts of town.

  “You go and tell Mama we bring Miguel home to lie with our father and brother,” Jorge said, in Spanish.

  “She will cry.”

  “We will all cry until Miguel is under the earth. Go.”

  “What do I say to our sister?” Carlos asked.

  “Tell Perla to help Mama wash our brother’s body with soap and water. I will begin to dig the grave.”

  “Ay de mi,” Carlos exclaimed. “I wish to die before our mother and sister see our dead brother.”

  “You will die soon enough, Carlos. Vete. Andale.”

  Carlos put the spurs to his horse’s flanks and raced off. The long Spanish rowels dug into the soft spots just in front of the horse’s haunches and it galloped toward the adobe, its whitewashed walls blushing pink in the early-morning sun.

  Jorge headed toward the small cemetery where his father and brother lay under mounds of dirt, their graves marked by wooden crosses bearing their names and dates of death. He could not say why he rode there, except maybe to examine the earth before he got a shovel and began to dig six feet into the ground when the sun would beat down on him and his body would run with sweat.

  He heard his mother’s screams as he pulled
up in front of the two graves. A moment later, he heard his sister wail and the two sounds mingled into a high-pitched screech of anguish. He turned his horse and plodded toward the house with its flower beds surrounding it and saw his mother tearing at her hair and pulling on her dress as if to rip them both off in a visual demonstration of grief. Perla, barely sixteen, began to scream at the top of her voice and jump up and down as if to hurl herself to the heavens or plunge herself into hell.

  “I am so sorry, Mama,” Jorge said as he rode up.

  “Is he dead?” his mother demanded. “Is Miguel dead?”

  “Yes, Mama, he is dead,” Jorge said.

  Carlos dismounted and hugged his sister, holding her tight to his chest.

  “Oh my God,” Esperanza cried, “my God, why did you take my son?”

  “Perla,” Jorge said as he stepped down out of the saddle, “boil the water and clear the table. I will carry Miguel inside so that you can wash him. I will take off his clothing.”

  “Let me see him, let me see him,” Esperanza shouted, rushing toward Jorge’s horse.

  Jorge stepped into her path and stopped her. Miguel’s body was draped over his old saddle, facedown, and Jorge did not want her to see the hole in his torso, the dried blood around the wound. But he knew she could smell him. They all could smell him. His mother knew Miguel was dead, but she could not force herself to believe it.

  “Mama,” Jorge said in a soothing voice, “go into the house and help Perla. I will carry Miguel into the kitchen and you will see him.”

  His mother screamed and pounded fists into her cheeks as Jorge turned her around and pushed her toward the house. She was bent over, weeping, and walking with a stiffness that made it seem as if her legs had turned leaden. He watched as she disappeared inside and then turned to untie Miguel and carry his body into the house.

  His mother screamed when she saw the dried blood and the bullet hole.

  “What happened?” she cried. “Who did this to Miguel?”

  “Carlos will tell you, Mama,” Jorge said. “I go to dig the grave.”

  “Get the priest,” his mother demanded. “Perla, go and get Padre Delgado. Bring him here. Miguel must have the last rites. Go quickly.”