The Amarillo Trail

by Ralph Compton

  They had a leader. They had a man they could follow through death’s door.

  Yes, he was filled with dread, but he also looked at his brother with a newfound respect.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” Miles said, “those of us who can. Short watches and make sure you got plenty of ammunition, that your rifles are fully loaded and your pistols working. Good night, everybody.”

  Jared smiled and stood up. He walked over to Miles and looked down at him.

  “See you in the morning, brother,” he said.

  “When you ride out tomorrow, Jared, you be careful, hear?”

  Jared said nothing. He walked away and disappeared into the night with his horse, Paco alongside him, leading his own horse.

  Miles stood up, looked at Cookie. “You put that wagon parallel to the water before morning, Cookie.”

  “I will. Good night, Miles.”

  The ducks on the river were silent and the bullbats were gone. There was only the stillness of the night and the distant winking of stars, the floating globe of the moon and the faint lapping of waters as two rivers sang their wise old songs that only a god could understand.

  Chapter 30

  It was still dark as an anthracite coal pit when Jared rode up to the chuck wagon the next morning. He was not riding his buckskin, Puddin’, but the black horse he had borrowed from Paco. He dismounted and walked over to the small group of men gathered by the small fire. A coffeepot hung from the irons, burbling and spewing freshets of steam through its spout.

  “Here’s you some coffee, Jared,” Cookie said, handing Jared a tin cup he had just poured halffull. “Watch your lips and tongue.”

  “Good advice, Cookie,” Jared said, and there was a joviality about him that surprised Miles, who was sipping coffee from his own cup.

  “It’s still pretty dark, Jared,” Miles said. “But we’re ready when you are.”

  “Soon as I finish my coffee, we’ll start running the herd across the river. My men and yours are ready to go when I give the word.”

  “I’m nervous,” Miles said, and held out a shaking hand to show his brother.

  “The nerves will go away as soon as you hear the first crack of a rifle from across the river.”

  “That’s not very reassuring, Jared.”

  “Think about the work to be done and keep your head down, brother,” Jared said.

  Miles gave out a tremulous chuckle and steadied his shaking hand.

  Jared surveyed the dark river. He had been mulling over his plan since after midnight when the guards changed shifts. Now he had made his decision and began to issue orders to his and Miles’s men.

  “I want to leave this space open,” Jared said, pointing to the landing where the ferry docked. “I want the herd spread out, a mile on each side, and at my signal, you put the cattle into the water and drive them across.”

  Paco and Roy listened intently and nodded. So too did Tad, Al, and Miles.

  “Where will you cross?” Miles asked.

  Jared raised his left hand and sliced the air as if he were wielding a meat cleaver. “I’m going straight across, with cattle on either side of me. As soon as I see a target, I’ll start shooting.”

  “That sounds pretty shaky to me, Jared,” Miles said.

  “The main thing is to keep the cattle moving across the river. When the guns go off, I don’t want cattle stampeding all over the place. Miles, you keep that herd moving. Use as many men as you need to push, push, push.”

  “Will do,” Miles said. He set his empty coffee cup on the ground next to a wagon wheel and began to give orders to the men at the head of the herd. He sent Curly Bob to the rear of the Lazy J herd to tell the drag riders to push the herd toward the river. “And don’t stop for anything. Keep your eyes peeled for strays and run every head across that river.”

  Curly Bob galloped off to spread the word.

  Jared rode down to the bank of the river and looked across.

  It was still dark, but he could see the shadowy silhouettes of the men across the river. They had a small fire, but it was partially shielded by stones piled to block off the light.

  He was ready.

  Jared drew in a breath and raised his hand high above his head. He let out his breath and dropped his hand. He prodded Paco’s horse with his blunt spurs and entered the flowing water of the river. He hunched over the saddle horn so that he presented no silhouette.

  He heard the splashing and saw cattle entering the river on his right and on his left. He smiled with satisfaction. Mentally, he counted off the yards to the other bank. More than a hundred.

  But the water was not as swift where he had entered. It was wide and shallow at that place. Some of the cattle at both ends would have to swim some, but they ought to make it if they didn’t panic and tire themselves out by flailing the water with their hooves.

  He heard some of the cowhands yell at the cattle and he waited until more whitefaces were in the river. Some swam toward him and he spurred the horse to move ahead.

  From across the river, Jared heard a man shout the alarm.

  “Here they come.”

  Men cursed and Jared saw some scramble for their rifles. Others grabbed at saddled horses.

  Then he heard the whip-crack of a rifle and saw a plume of blue and orange flame partially illuminate a man’s face, a man who held the rifle and was aiming low, at the cattle.

  From behind him, rifles crackled as cowhands began to shoot from behind the chuck wagon. The air sizzled with the buzz of lead bullets and some whistled past his ears. He heard splashes. A cow reared its head and fell over with a resounding splash. Men shouted from both sides of the river, cursing and warning, firing their rifles in rapid succession.

  Jared kept low and kept his horse moving forward toward the opposite bank. He heard bullets splash around him. He looked at the flashes from the rifle muzzles and tried to pick out a target. He wanted Boggs, but he would take down any man he could line up in his sights.

  He slipped his rifle from its boot and levered a cartridge into the firing chamber. He hugged the horse’s neck and extended the rifle along its left side. The barrel moved from side to side and up and down. He could not get a clear shot.

  One man walked down to the bank and Jared sat up slightly and put the rifle to his shoulder. He lined up the front blade with the rear buckhorn and saw the man’s chest in a direct line of sight.

  Jared held his breath and squeezed the trigger.

  His rifle exploded, the recoil ramming the stock against his shoulder. Flame and lead spurted from the muzzle and he heard the whoosh of air as the bullet sped toward its target.

  The man screamed and grabbed at his chest. His rifle slipped from his hands and tumbled down off the bank and into the water. Then the man toppled forward and hit the water with a splash. A man up on the bank cursed and fired at Jared, who turned his horse and then turned it again to avoid being hit.

  A bullet whizzed close to Jared’s ear and he felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck. He sat up then and swung his rifle, looking for another target, higher up on the bank.

  More rifles boomed and more bullets ripped through the water around him.

  From behind, he could hear the cowhands shooting and he saw one of the farmers stagger and fall to his knees.

  Cattle swarmed around him, in a panic. They were wading through water up to their chests, pushing against the current, floundering to keep their footing. Their white faces were turned upward and he could see the pink of their noses as they continued to the other bank, pushed by the cattle behind them and the men yelling them on as if they were all in a footrace at a county fair.

  Jared could no longer find a target. Instead, he just aimed and guessed, pulled the trigger. He levered cartridge after cartridge into the receiver of the Winchester until the magazine was empty. He shoved the rifle back in its boot and drew his Colt six-gun. There was no time to reload the rifle.

  He saw that he wasn’t even halfway across and th
e bullets came fast and furious. He tried to wade the horse in a zigzag, but the water was too swift and the horse was tiring too fast.

  In the east there was a small rent in the sky and light spilled through the fissure like cream rising in a churn. Shadowy men on the other side were lying down and picking their targets, while others rode horses up and down the high bank. These were shooting at cattle and trying to unseat horsemen who had entered the river and were driving the cattle.

  It made Jared sick to see cattle go under, leaving a bloody froth to be washed downstream before they reemerged, belly up, their hooves stiffening in the throes of death as they tumbled in the current.

  He passed the midway point of the river, and now that there was some light, he saw the men who were shooting at him. He cocked his pistol and swung it toward a man who was using the raft for cover. He squeezed the trigger and the pistol bucked in his hand. He saw the man duck as the bullet whined just over his head. Then the man put his rifle to his shoulder and began to shoot at Jared.

  He recognized the man as the light in the east grew stronger.

  It was Pete Boggs, and he used a post for cover.

  Jared fired again, but his horse jerked in the current just then and he knew his shot had gone wild.

  Boggs took aim and fired.

  Jared felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder. Seconds later, his arm went numb and he felt the hot trickle of blood running down his arm on the inside of his tattered sleeve. He gulped in air and grabbed the saddle horn with his left hand. The hand seemed to have no feeling in it and slipped off the saddle horn to dangle uselessly at his side.

  He fired his pistol again at Boggs, squinting to block out the pain that was now shooting down his arm and across his chest.

  Jared turned his horse. He headed straight for Boggs. His stomach churned with a sudden sickness and he felt the bile roil up in his throat. He slumped down over the saddle horn, felt it press against his flaming chest. The horn seemed to take away some of the pain.

  His horse waded forward, struggling with each step. Jared dug his spurs deep into the horse’s flanks as he stared ahead, his eyes filling with tears, Boggs just a blur, the barrel of his rifle spitting out sparks and lead.

  He heard the smack of a bullet, and the horse quivered from the blow. Jared looked back and saw a furrow in the horse’s rump. Blood oozed from the wound and the horse twisted beneath him, a woeful whinny of pain issuing from its throat.

  Boggs turned to men up on the bank and yelled something at them. Jared couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he heard the word “smoke” and saw men get up and run toward the small fire behind the stacked stones.

  The horse struggled against the tug of the river’s current, but drew closer to the landing on the other side.

  The sun began to edge up over the horizon, its red rim like the top of a savage eye. Shadows stretched across the water and the prairie, the canvas on the chuck wagon lit up like a white sheet, and men’s faces began to take on shape and features as if they were actors on a stage suddenly lit by footlights.

  Jared watched as Boggs dropped to his knees and braced his rifle against the post where the lines from the raft tugged against the rocking waters of the river.

  Jared drew in a breath and forced himself to aim the pistol. He steadied it against the horse’s neck, lined up the sights, and held his breath. He squeezed the trigger. The explosion lifted the pistol in his hand, but he knew he had shot true.

  He saw Boggs twitch as the bullet smacked into his breastbone. A crimson flower blossomed on Boggs’s chest and he threw up his arms. The rifle floated above him for a split second, then crashed onto the raft.

  Boggs tumbled backward, mortally wounded.

  Men on the bank turned to see Boggs go down, then swung their rifles to take aim at Jared, who, once again, slumped over the pommel, his stomach retching as if he had swallowed arsenic poisoning.

  Three rifles cracked from atop the bank.

  Jared felt the slugs tear into his leg, his right arm, and across his chest. He felt as if a hot poker, cherry red, had burned into his sternum and he felt a black cloud descend over him.

  Fire seemed to burn in every pore. He holstered his pistol and grabbed the saddle horn with both hands, despite the searing pain that seemed to strike him from every direction.

  He hung on for dear life, but the blackness took away his sight and blotted out his mind.

  And, somewhere, in a brief glimmer of light in that terrible darkness, he encountered the scrap of a thought that told him he was going to die.

  Chapter 31

  Miles tried to make sense of it all through the din of bellowing cattle, shouting men, and rapid gunfire streaming from both sides of the river. He had never seen so many cattle in the water before. The men drove them off the bank in large numbers and never let up, yelling, waving their hats, and cursing the slow and hesitant ones.

  He fired his own rifle at shadows across the river. He never knew if he hit anyone, but he shot at heads poking up, and men on horseback. He watched as cattle took bullets and rolled into the river with bullets through their heads. It made him sick to see the senseless slaughter.

  He thought he saw one of his own, or Jared’s, men go down. He could not be sure. He could not be sure of anything in the melee around him. He caught glimpses of Jared, who seemed to be almost motionless in the middle of the river. But when he looked again, he saw that his brother was making slow progress and was miraculously still alive and firing his rifle.

  More and more cattle rushed up on both sides of the chuck wagon. Men, men he only barely recognized, drove them into the river and then rode back to drive more in behind them.

  Cookie climbed out of the chuck wagon and ran off into the darkness when bullets ripped holes in the canvas top. As soon as he was out of range, he had to scramble to avoid being trampled by the surging herd of cattle. He ran to the river, where he flattened himself against a large rock that jutted from a small mound in a copse of young cottonwoods. A pair of mud hens jumped up from the river and flew south a few hundred yards before skidding to a stop in the middle of the Arkansas.

  Ducks, startled by the noise of the herd and the gunfire, crisscrossed the sky with whistling wings and angry quacks. Their white bellies shone ghostly against the night sky as they climbed out of danger and abandoned the river for the far fields where they had fed for most of the night.

  As the eastern horizon began to pale, Miles saw Joadie Lee Bostwick, his horse in the water up to its knees, twist in the saddle as a bullet tore into his abdomen. He doubled over and yelled something, but Miles couldn’t understand him. Then Joadie Lee turned his horse and clapped spurs into its flanks, headed back to the shore he had left moments before. He rode out of the water and then toppled from his horse.

  Paco rushed to Joadie Lee’s side and pried the rifle from his hands.

  “Lie still,” Paco said. “Where are you hit?”

  “I dunno,” Joadie Lee gasped. “My gut, I think.”

  Paco felt the sticky blood oozing from the drover’s abdomen. When he pressed on the small hole, Joadie Lee lost consciousness. Paco turned him over and felt down the wounded man’s back. There was an exit wound oozing blood on Joadie Lee’s right side. He pulled the bandanna from around his neck and stuffed one end of it in the hole, then turned Joadie Lee over.

  “Hold on, Joadie Lee,” Paco said, but when he bent down and put his ear to the man’s mouth, he knew that the cowhand was gone. He stood up and looked across the river at the stick figures of the men shooting their rifles. He raised his rifle to his shoulder, picked out a running man, waited until he stopped, then squeezed the trigger. The bullet from Paco’s rifle hit the man in the side. He screamed, dropped his rifle, and ran several yards before he dropped.

  The shooting went on, and Miles knew they would lose several head of cattle. He kept looking at his brother, and as the sun began to spray the prairie with its thin light, he saw Jared riding toward a man who looked
like Pete Boggs.

  Miles felt something grab at his heart. He saw Boggs turn and yell to the men up by the fire.

  “Make the smoke,” Boggs yelled, and the next minute, he saw Jared shoot the leader of the brigands. Then he saw men on the bank aim their rifles at Jared. He saw Jared jerk in the saddle. The horse twisted beneath him, and saw a puff of dust rise off the horse’s flank. The horse crumpled and Jared slid into the water.

  Miles saw men piling something on the fire until it bulged with gray smoke. Another man approached the smothered fire. He was carrying a horse blanket.

  “Paco, Roy,” Miles yelled. “Shoot that man trying to make a smoke signal. Everybody, drop that man.”

  Al and Roy began shooting. Miles dropped his rifle and ran to the river. He slipped off his boots and dived in. His hat floated off his head and floated into a clutch of cattle breasting their way through the water.

  Paco shot the man with the blanket before he could drop it onto the fire. Another man crawled over and retrieved the blanket. He stood up to make smoke signals. Roy and Al both shot their rifles at the same time and the man fell face forward into the smoldering fire. He was stone dead and his body shut off oxygen, putting the fire out.

  Miles swam to the place where he had seen Jared fall from his horse. It was light enough to see, and he reached out when he saw a leg and grabbed Jared’s boot. He pulled himself close enough to wrap an arm around his brother’s torso. He pulled him out of the water and turned him over. He grabbed Jared’s head and turned his face to the sky.

  Jared moaned and Miles breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Jared,” he said. “I got you. Just keep breathin’, will you?”

  Cattle swarmed around Miles and he batted the water with one hand to drive them away. He began to swim back to his side of the river, pulling Jared along with him. He flailed his legs, trying to find the bottom. His socks touched the bottom a few yards from shore and he waded to the bank, tugging Jared along under his arm. He climbed ashore and laid Jared down. Miles panted from the exertion. He was soaking wet, but he didn’t care. He bent over his brother and listened for his breathing.