But he could not find Tom Arnold and so waited, waving to Moonlight Bailey as the wrangler’s round, simple face bobbed past in the dust, then swung close to the girl as her mules heaved the wagon up over the rim.
Whatever this home-breaking might have meant to her she showed none of it now. She was flushed and laughing.
He grinned at her. “All you need is the proper cuss words. You’ll be a mule skinner yet! Where’s your father?”
She nodded backward. “He’s coming.” Soberly she added, “It’s hard on him, Lew, leaving; I don’t think we know.”
“And you too, Joy.”
“No,” she said firmly. “No. Not now. When I closed the door I closed something in there for good. Something that I know is ended. And when I left the yard I didn’t look back.” Her clear eyes came up to him, bright again. “I’m as excited as I ever was about anything! Where will we be tonight?”
He shook his head. “That’s one thing on the trail, Joy, we’ll never know.”
Ahead of them the longhorns were grazing too widely; he rode on to shape the trail formation.
The men had waited, bunched. Coming among them, he picked out Quarternight and said, “You’ll point with me, John.”
He turned to Jim Hope, briefly hating to hand this boy the worst job which was always the youngest rider’s lot. A man who worked close behind the herd got all of the dust and heat and smells generated by four thousand animals.
“Jimmy,” he asked, “think you can handle the drags?”
Unknowing, Jim Hope took it with a grin on his freckled face. “Sure, Lew, sure. I can handle that!”
The rest of the men divided for swing places, and within another hour, under pressure of riders on either flank, the herd was shaped into a blunt arrowhead, two miles long. It was an arrow aimed toward the north, guided always in that direction by Lew Burnet and John Quarternight at its point. Off on the left, away from the cattle, Moonlight Bailey grazed his horse herd; while to the rear, out of the dust, the two wagons crawled along in the slow and endless pace.
From his point position Lew looked back over the rippling mass of animals. As this herd was going to the Indians it wasn’t as clean as some that he had taken north. It wasn’t like those that went to experienced stockmen who knew cattle—herds “swept with a broom” till all of the steers were of a size and weight.
But this would all go into jerky anyway when the northern Cheyennes got hold of these animals, slaughtered them, and hung their strips of meat in the sun to dry. So class didn’t matter. In this drive was some of the best beef that Texas offered, prime four-year-olds of a kind which were to plant their hardy, self-reliant strain forever in the cattle ranches of Wyoming and Montana. In it, too, was some of the worst, the mossy-horns up to twenty years old, who had lived all of their wild lives out in the mesquite and had a growth like gray moss on the under side of their horns.
Such a mixture made trailing harder. Yet for a little while, until the longhorns’ morning hunger was satisfied, they grazed in the slow-moving arrowhead shape. Then the natural leaders began to fight forward. Individual battles broke out, the fighters ramming their heads together to stand shoving and bawling and kicking up volcanoes of dust. They blocked parts of the herd until on each side the swing men were crowding into the packed bodies, lashing them on with their rope ends. And at the rear the several hundred head of shes were holding a woman’s conference. In a body they decided suddenly to go back home. Trying to stop them, young Jim Hope was learning his first trail lesson.
It was the usual start, no better nor worse than he had expected. He watched backward over the repeated melees, yet took no hand. Both men and beasts needed to get the fight out of their systems. But there was one old brindle steer that continued to be a troublemaker long into the forenoon.
He would come horning his way up to the point, and then, having gained the lead, he would turn about, spread his legs and bellow a challenge for someone to dispute his place. It was always accepted.
Twice they chased him to the rear of the herd, only to see him come plowing up again.
“John,” Lew said at last, “we can’t shoot the bugger. There’s only one thing to do. Got your wife along?”
“Somewheres,” Quarternight said.
He stopped and untied a coat from behind his saddle, felt in its pockets and drew out a leather pouch. He emptied part of its contents into his rough brown hand, buttons and pins and needles and a spool of black thread. Squinting, he ran a length of thread through one needle and handed it across.
Together they ran the brindle steer off to one side. With a loop dropped in front of his forelegs Quarternight tripped him over, and before he could rise Lew had leaped down to sit on his head.
He looked into the fiery eyes. “Old boy, you’ve raised your hell long enough.” He closed the leathery lids and took three stitches in their edges, tied a knot and sewed the others. “Now then.” He stood up.
Guided between their two horses, the steer moved back to the herd as docile as a lamb. In a couple of days the thread would rot. In the meantime he could feel his way among the other cattle, grazing and drinking when they did. There would be no more fight in that one for the rest of the trail.
“Sure is too bad,” Quarternight remarked, “you can’t tame some men the same way!”
Lew laughed. “Might try it, John.”
Through the morning he watched that struggle of cow personalities go on. In time the leadership at the forefront of the point seemed to have settled upon a muley, a quick black steer without horns. It set him to wondering what made a leader in animals and men. In this case it wasn’t size, for the muley was a runt and handicapped by being hornless. But there he was, scarred and bleeding from his battles, stepping out now with his head up high.
Likewise the weak and the lazy had sifted backward into the drags. There they would remain for twelve hundred miles.
At noon Owl-Head swung his four-mule commissary out of line and pulled up a mile to the front. By the time the herd reached him he had his two-gallon pot of coffee boiled. Singly or in pairs the men paused, drank from their saddles, and rode on to catch the drifting longhorns. There was no stop.
Taking his cup, Lew said, “Keep on due north and you’ll find a tank for your night camp. Raise a smoke to lead us in.”
He rode over to Joy’s wagon seat. She had on a white muslin dress and one of Steve’s broad-brimmed hats. But the sun had burned a red triangle at her throat, and she looked tired and hot.
She smiled up at him and yet she couldn’t hide what he knew. The wagon had no springs. Jolting along this rough ground, she was taking even more punishment than a man in his saddle.
“All right?” he asked.
“I’ll get used to it,” she said.
“Try walking sometimes. And if you get too tired you can hitch your mules to Owl-Head’s coupling pole and lie down.”
He rode back and unfastened the end flaps of canvas and secured them against the bows. That made a tunnel beneath the top. The wagon’s motion would stir a little wind to keep her cool.
Hour by hour through a breathless afternoon the blunt arrowhead grazed forward, leaving a mile-wide swath of barren, dusty earth where it had passed. With the disputes for places settled, the animals moved quietly now, and on either side the swing men closed up in little groups to ride and talk.
From the point he saw Steve and Clay and Splann gather far behind him. They rode like that for most of the afternoon.
The two white-topped wagons had vanished early northward over a swell of ground. It was almost dark when he saw Owl-Head’s plume of smoke. He waved Joe Wheat up to take his place. To Quarternight he said, “I’m going on.”
There was something he wanted to look at before the longhorns’ hoofs trampled out all sign. His knowledge that Cross T horses had been run up Crazy Woman Creek to these plains had
gnawed inside of him, its puzzle only half clear. Now a deep notch in the plain’s edge to the east marked the entrance to Crazy Woman, while off on his left was the tank, a natural hollow covering several acres. It still held enough muddy water, he saw, from the winter’s rain. He brought himself to a sudden stop next moment.
He had cut a clearly defined horse trail leading from Crazy Woman, a trail that he knew would strike on across the Staked Plain and far to the west. For this was the route of an old horse-thief exchange, along which animals stolen in Texas were driven to New Mexico and traded for others stolen there. Thus a horse rustled in one state would not be seen in that state again.
Turning toward the tank, he knew there was reason for this business starting up once more. A hundred thousand head of horses had gone out of Texas with the trail drives. All of them were sold in the north. The country was cleaned of good stock now, and if a man needed a remuda of eighty or a hundred he would find such a number hard to come by.
It was clear enough in his mind that the Indian Supply herd had needed horses and had got them by trading Cross T stock via the New Mexico exchange. The men who had caught him near Crazy Woman were not only rustlers but part of the Indian Supply crew. Yet what still had no answer was Clay Manning’s part in that deal.
Approaching camp where the two wagons had stopped beside the tank’s rim, he saw the charred embers of other camps near the cook’s fire. Owl-Head rose from stirring something in a Dutch oven and jerked a thumb toward them.
“What do you make of that?”
He didn’t say. No use spreading what he knew. But Moonlight Bailey, driving ahead of the longhorns with his horse herd, had cut that trail from Crazy Woman. He was riding in between the wagons now, a small brown man with a bullfrog voice.
“By Judas, Lew!” he burst out, “I know where our saddle stock went!”
“All right. Keep it to yourself.”
“Keep it!” Moonlight’s round, simple face turned dusty red. “Tom’s ribbed me plenty for losin’ horses. If I hadn’t listened to Clay, him tellin’ me there was no use lookin’—”
“Moonlight,” he said, “shut up!” He had seen the canvas of Joy’s wagon open. “Now you mind!”
Then he heard her voice behind him.
“Lew, come here.”
He wheeled his horse around. She was sitting on the blankets of her bed, her hat off and her dark hair falling loose.
“What was Moonlight saying?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Your wrangler sleeps out in the moon too much. He sees things.”
“No. It was about the horses and I’ve been thinking it wasn’t, possible for twenty or thirty head to vanish the way they did. What has Moonlight found?”
He didn’t want to worry her with mysteries, and yet he didn’t want this discovery to get back to Clay Manning either.
He said, “That’s right, it was about the horses. Moonlight thinks he has the answer. I don’t think he has. But let it go for now, will you? Don’t talk.”
She nodded and smiled a little. “I learned to keep things to myself, Lew, long ago. I’ve had such a good example from you men.”
He grinned, and yet, riding from her, he hated that any doubt and suspicion should begin to trouble her so early on the trail.
The longhorns had smelled water and they were coming up from the south, walking fast. He rode in to part the leaders until the herd had swarmed around the tank like bees at a saucer of molasses; and afterward, when they had been pooled off in the dark, he held back a little longer, circling them alone, making sure they were quiet and ready to bed down. Then from camp, where the white-topped wagons stood up high in the firelight and the shapes of men moved back and forth with the bunched night-guard horses picketed beyond, the cook’s banging on the iron lid of a Dutch oven drew him in.
He washed at the tub and slicked his hair back, then joined the hungry line. They speared pickles first out of an open keg, filled their tin plates from a row of ovens on the fire pit. That meal showed why a cook was paid double wages, twice as much as the riders. Fourteen hours in the saddle can put a man’s temper on edge and start him growling about quitting the job. Only good food and plenty of it can bring his spirits up again.
Before the start Owl-Head Jackson had butchered a yearling steer, quartered it and buried the meat wrapped in canvas deep among the bedrolls in his wagon. Each night he would hang it out in the cold air. He had dug two pits for his cooking, and on cross rods above the coals were half a dozen Dutch ovens. Out of some had come his round loaves of bread. Two held sliced loin, liver, and heart mixed with brown flour gravy. Another was full of John Chinaman for desert—rice boiled with raisins and molasses. Stewed dried apples had been set aside for the men who wanted them. Not many did.
It was a silent meal, heavy with the first-day tiredness. Usually afterward there would be talk and cigarettes and more coffee, drunk from bedrolls ringed in the firelight. But here on the barren Staked Plain there could be no wasteful blaze. All of the cook’s wood supply was carried in logs on a cowhide stretched beneath the wagon axles. It must last at least a week.
Only young Jim Hope, grinning even after his hot and dusty day with the drags, broke into the little quiet time before the night guard had to ride.
“How about a song, somebody? Don’t a trail crew always sing—”
“Kid,” Quarternight told him, “any singing tonight, you’ll do it to the cows!” He turned his head. “Lew, you notice these ash heaps here at the tank? Someone’s camped.”
“No, not lately,” he said. “They’re pretty old.”
But across the fire from him he saw Clay Manning lift a quick glance and let it drop. Shortly after that Clay and his first guard rode into the dark.
The others unrolled their beds. He was standing alone then, smoking a last cigarette, contented with his knowledge of a good start. They had made fifteen miles today. He looked toward Joy’s wagon. She had eaten ahead of the crew and for a little while lamplight had glowed inside the canvas. It was wholly dark now.
Then in a moment Tom Arnold came in from somewhere afoot and paused to say, “We’re doing well. If we keep this up—” He nodded. They wouldn’t keep it up; he knew that and so did Tom.
Alone again, with his smoke not finished, he turned at a sound from the wagons. Joy was coming toward him, looking small and her white dress misty in the darkness. She slipped one hand in the bend of his arm and stood there silently at his side.
He waited, feeling that some trouble had brought her, and then she had read that thought. She looked up, saying quietly, “No, Lew. It’s nothing. I’m all right.” But he felt the grip of her hand tighten on his arm.
CHAPTER NINE
The Staked Plain
He picked up the military rock piles, scouting ahead the next day. Far behind him the herd was like a dark red ship becalmed on a green sea. In every direction lay that greenness, the short, curly buffalo grass running unbroken to the sharp horizons of the plain. There were no landmarks to guide him now, only these piles of rock.
From his saddle, looking down at the small heap undisturbed by rain or snow and polished by the winds of fifty years, he thought of the army that had marched here into a land that was then wholly unknown. It was a brave and tragic march. Even earlier by three hundred years an army of another sort had crossed these desolate miles, Coronado’s fortune hunters, the Bright-men-with-four-legs of Apache legend, first of any horsemen they had ever seen. It was Coronado who had driven juniper stakes by which he had followed his trail backward after months of wandering, to leave the name in Spanish, Llano Estacado—the Staked Plain.
Picturing that band in their heavy armor and those months they had spent, he thought it was good for a man to look back like this sometimes and see what other men had done. What Coronado had faced and lived through made his trail job look small.
Toward evenin
g of that same day he found the first of the dry cidnagas that Willy Nickle had told about. Riding alone again, with Moonlight Bailey’s horse herd following him ahead of the far-off cattle, he came upon this nature’s freak.
Two ribbons of spiked salt grass grew beside a narrow channel of sand a mile long. It began and ended abruptly; the white surface looked hard. But when he rode across it once and back again the sand gave a little like rubber.
He waved Moonlight on and turned the horse herd into the channel. Together they raced the eighty head of animals up the length of it, wheeled them on the plain and brought them back.
Under their pounding the white strip darkened and moved in long running waves. He saw a grin on Moonlight’s simple face.
“Keep it up!” he yelled and grinned himself. Who was it in the Bible got water from a rock?
Cups dug by the horses’ hoofs began to fill. Little pools rose and ran together. Then the herd was splashing in a shallow stream.
“That’s enough,” he said and watched the animals drink, standing fetlock deep. Like this, Apaches often kept themselves alive in deserts where white men died of thirst.
His waving signal brought Owl-Head on in front of the longhorns to fill his barrels before the cattle poured in. Coming up with a clatter of split hoofs and a deep, growling moan, they spread out the mile length, drank, and moved across. Within ten minutes afterward the sand lay white and dry again in the sun.
Day by day, crawling northward, he felt the desolate hush of this land put its silence on both the herd and the men. He saw the lead cattle up at the point lift their heads and move them in their jerky fashion, looking for something they didn’t see. It was a lonely country, too big, without a familiar mark. In the night camps men talked in low voices.
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