If he hadn’t known this same experience once before he would not believe that men or beasts could hold through another hour. You reached an absolute limit, and then what kept you going he didn’t know. Yet his awareness of being dead tired had passed; a dull, slack feeling had come over his body. It was as if he had no weight. He locked both hands on the saddle horn and let his head nod.
The wind pushed steadily against his back. And then he no longer felt it. A dulled peace filled his brain. He knew next that he must have slept soundly, with only his grip on the horn keeping him in the saddle.
What had wakened him was something like a cold damp rag wiped across his face. It jerked him upright. There was a faint grayness beyond his swollen lids. He was suddenly aware of a strange quiet. Then he saw the cattle, a thin line that trailed behind him, shoving their muzzles through wet grass.
A drop of water splashed from his hatbrim; he was riding in a misty rain with only a part of the herd that somewhere had split up. There was no wind. He drew his gun, firing it into the air, but had no answer.
Dawn had never made him feel more grateful as he sat waiting while the gray light turned to silver and a little morning breeze sprang up, pushing back the mist. The longhorns were spent. They had halted to stand with drooping heads, soaking the wetness into their hides. The mist rose and became a thick layer, and then a golden sunrise spread beneath it across the level plain.
Far off, in what he knew now was south, he picked out the first column of his scattered herd. Two others were separated from it by perhaps three miles. On behind them he found the white tops of the wagons. But as he moved his gaze on slowly around the sharp horizon there was no sign of water nor the double butte to set him on his course. His moment’s gratefulness sank to a heavy dread. They had come too far from the last watered camp. The cattle couldn’t go on. Another day would bring its killing heat, for clouds that followed a dust storm never held long.
He was staring east; he gave his head a sudden jerk to clear it. He wiped one hand across his swollen eyes. They weren’t tricking him. As if from the grass roots smoke twisted upward over there. It rose and shaped a pillar, broke and rose and broke again. Willy Nickle—sending up his talk!
He spurred his tired horse south. Halfway toward the scattered columns he drew his gun again and fired it. He pulled his horse around into short fast circles.
They heard his shots that time and saw his signal. Little figures of men started out toward him. He rode on and met John Quarternight first. The old man’s beard was muddy white, his eyes puffed almost closed.
“Boy,” he said, “we got here. Wherever that be. There’s someone’s camp, though, yonder.”
“Willy Nickle, I think,” Lew said. “I’m going to look. I’ll leave you to gather up.”
It was not until a gentle swell of ground lifted him after half an hour’s riding that he saw the crooked line of a creek bed twisting away to the east. The smoke was rising from near its source. He looked back. The three scattered columns of longhorns were slowly converging. The wagons were coming on ahead.
The creek was still two miles off, and before he reached it the smoke ended. Riding into a little grove of trees, he found only the embers, no sign of Willy Nickle at first, until he saw the forked stick. It had been thrust into the ground with one prong like a thumb pointing downstream.
He let his horse have water, got off and drank above the animal and bathed his aching eyes. He had a smoke, feeling the life come back in him; things weren’t so bad. You held on long enough and your luck was bound to turn. He followed in the stick’s direction.
Where the stream bed widened between high-cut banks and the bottom was thick with walnut and the tall brush of wild plum, a doe antelope had made a nest for herself, pawing the dry leaves until they rimmed a little hollow. It was sheltered from wind and rain, a snug retreat, and in it Willy Nickle sat, contentedly smoking his black clay pipe. He threw up his left hand in a silent salute and dropped it. His gentle face was brown and smooth from a recent shave.
Lew grinned and shifted over into one stirrup, halting. “Well,” he said, “we had a wind.”
Willy nodded. “So you did.”
All of his traveling equipment hung from a thorny plum branch above the antelope’s nest, two extra pairs of high-topped moccasins and a bundle of some black dried meat. His needle gun lay across his knees, wrapped in soft deer hide.
“I guess,” Lew said, “we clean missed the double butte. Came too far north maybe. But here’s a river.”
“South branch of the Peace,” said Willy. He took the cherry pipestem from his mouth and pointed with it. “If a man heads out of here quarterin’ east of north he’ll hit a creek of the Red. He’ll follow that to the Red herself, ten miles above Doan’s store. Two days, maybe, if his men have made it.”
“Some,” Lew said, “are dust blinded. But they’ll come out.” His luck was good. They hadn’t even lost much time. He grinned again at Willy and moved his eyes to the black meat. “Don’t know what that is there but it sure looks bad. We’ll have beef in camp when the wagons come.”
The old man’s fine chestnut hair brushed his shoulders, his head wagging.
“Cow meat. That’s no doin’s.” He pointed his pipe-stem at the bundle. “Bobcat. There’s the thing if a man can’t get painter. Nothin’ can shine with painter anyway, lest it’s beaver tail.” He looked off blankly into space, remembering, saying in a moment, “That was a time, boy. Well it was!”
“So I guess,” Lew agreed and waited, hating to leave this old fellow, as he always did, and feeling somehow there were other things that Willy might tell him. But there was no more talk. He could see the heady smoke of kinnikinnick begin to cloud the mild gray eyes.
“Well,” he said and lifted his hand and turned away, never quite sure he would see old Willy again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Red River Water
In three days they were still crawling through low hills south of the Red. Blindness healed slowly in both animals and men. Three had ridden in the cook’s wagon. Clay and Steve rode with Joy. They both had bandages smeared with axle grease over their eyes and sat up with her on the seat.
He had a queer feeling sometimes, seeing them in a row like that. When he dropped back along the herd he could see their fun and hear them laughing together. They sang a lot. Old songs that he used to sing with her. It took him back to Three Little Apaches; only it was Clay’s big shape there now instead of his.
But today all of his crew were in their saddles, eager to reach the Red. That meant something. It was halfway to Dodge. It was the last of Texas soil. Beyond the Red River lay the Indian Nations and the north. Every trail drive marked it with a celebration of some kind.
It wouldn’t be long now. The changing growth and life around him told of the fertile valley beyond. A man, he thought, never knew how much he hated leaving Texas till he came to the north of it like this in the first of June. He guessed it was what she did to bring him back. She could be a mean one, burn him up and blow him around and then give him this to remember last.
He rode the point with Quarternight and could see old Rebel John was feeling what he felt. Between them the narrow file of longhorns pushed their gaunt faces through carpets of foxglove and bluebonnet that stood above the foot-high grass. Antelope watched them from the hill ridges and flashed their white rumps, wheeling away. Grouse drummed in the groves of elm and maple that shaded a little creek. A sweet smell of earth and grass and flowers was heavy in the quiet midday air.
A man would never feel this lonesomeness about leaving any place up north. He was sure of that; not a Texas man. There was Tom Arnold riding back behind the horse herd—what must this crossing the Red River mean to one like him? It must go hard. He was leaving the biggest part of his life down here, the best part. What was Tom looking ahead to in Wyoming? Not much, so far, if he was counting on S
teve. That had been his hope at the start.
Well, what was he looking ahead to himself? Nothing that he could see. Not the ranch he’d planned there on the Powder when he had thought he was going to build it up alone. You didn’t pen two bulls in the same pasture. Get this herd to Ogallala. Beyond that he didn’t know.
His head bobbed to the slow walk of his horse. He let it nod, peacefully drowsy, until Quarternight’s quick voice came across to him.
“There she is!”
He looked up. The fold between the hills had widened. Beyond its mouth lay a five-mile level shelf of grass. Far-off red bluffs marked the river, high and shining in the sun.
He grinned and said, “A man’s glad to see that old girl somehow.”
“Glad when he’s across her.”
“Well, sure,” he said, “that’s right.”
Men had reason to want this river behind them. No other, except perhaps the Canadian with its quicksands, farther north, had taken so many lives. He had crossed the Red’s mile-wide bottom with hardly enough water to wet a horse’s hoofs and had looked back one time, half an hour later, at a foaming wall rolling downward faster than an animal could run. That could happen with no warning beneath a cloudless sky. A man never knew when a cloudburst far to the west might send that flood upon him.
In a little while he was pointing out upon the open shelf, as flat as a floor, and he could look far east along its great bend. No other herds swarmed across its grass. Doan’s store and the main trail’s crossing were ten miles downstream.
“We’re alone here, John,” he said. “That’s good.”
Behind them the crack of rope ends against leather sounded like pistol shots. Swing men were crowding the longhorns on. But even the cattle had sensed the river and walked at a faster pace of their own accord.
His plan had been to cross at once and go into camp on the north side. There would still be time for an afternoon’s rest and the night’s fun. But riding ahead, he reached the lower bluffs of the south shore and looked down upon an angry, churning stream. The Red was full from bank to bank. There had been heavy rains somewhere west.
He swung back and met the point and told Quarternight, “She’s up, John. Too high to swim. We’ll have to hold over.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it much. We may get some neighbors we don’t want.” He waved his swing men up. “No use worrying about that now. I’ll ride down to Doan’s after we water and see what herds are on the trail.”
Under the added pressure of swing riders he bent the point west toward a creek. He let the herd spread out there to drink and afterward left them standing drowsily under a two-man guard.
He had seen both wagons pull into a grove of tall box elders close to the riverbank. By the time he rode into camp Owl-Head Jackson was already starting his special meal, like every good housewife, making his piecrust first, rolling it out with a beer bottle for a pin.
Joy was coming from her wagon with a bundle of clean clothes. She laughed up at him.
“I’m going to have a bath!”
“Don’t use all the hot water!” He grinned and rode on to get his own change of clothes from his bedroll.
Others were ahead of him below the bluff, their yells coming up like a bunch of schoolboys just turned loose for the summer. That was what reaching the Red could do.
He slid down the bank toward them. The water was up high around the trunks of willows. They were all in or standing on the red gravel beach, naked. He stripped off his shirt and thought most men had better keep their clothes on. It was like a rooster without his feathers. Too much lean ribs and knobby joints here, except Steve and Neal Good, having a water fight out in the stream. Steve was small-boned and made in slim, clean lines. Neal Good, half Spanish, was the only one whose hide was the same dark color of his face. The three old men, Quarternight, Joe Wheat, and Ash Brownstone, stood off together like bearded saints without their robes.
He pulled down his pants and kicked off his boots and saw Clay swimming out in the deep channel. Nobody else in this crew could swim. He yelled as he jumped in. The water was as warm as tea. Charley Storms wheeled and tripped him under. He came up with his body dripping the river’s red silt.
Clay swam toward them, stood up, and walked close. Charley grinned at him.
“Clay,” he asked, “what do you use to keep that hair brushed out?”
“Sweetheart,” Clay said, “I use a currycomb all over. Don’t you wish you were man enough for that?” His blue-eyed good humor flashed for an instant. Then he sobered. “Lew, is this a holiday?”
“Part.”
“Then I’m riding down to Doan’s.”
It was an ordinary-enough request; a man could get a few things at the store. But that was not the reason, he felt, with Clay.
He shook his head. “None of the crew’s going down there. I don’t figure it’s safe.”
Clay’s stare sharpened on him. “Kind of highhanded, aren’t you? Maybe you’ll find it hard to make that order stick!”
He didn’t answer. But afterward, standing ankle deep in the water, shaving in front of a mirror propped against a willow fork, he went back to find Clay’s meaning. It wasn’t clear. If a man deserted against the trail boss’s order he might as well quit. Clay wouldn’t do that. He continued his shave.
What he saw in a mirror frequently surprised him. It was so much a tougher face than he felt inside. It hadn’t been born with any softness, with its long jawbone ending in a blunt chin. Weather and time had leaned it down. But it wasn’t that either. He guessed the scar was what made it look the way it did. The scar made his cheek stiff. He could feel that set hardness even when he smiled. He passed the straight blade of his razor across it, only a white curved line now, but he knew how red it got sometimes. Funny what a thing like that could do. You were a kid and fell under a horse and ever afterward your life was different from what it might have been.
He had forgotten about Clay’s threat and he felt good, cleaned and dressed once more, walking back into the shady grove of the camp. Then he saw Ed Splann.
Splann had not been at the river and he had wondered. Only Jim Hope and Tom Arnold were on guard with the herd. But he was here in camp now with his horse saddled. His clothes that he had worked and slept in for a week hadn’t been changed.
“Thought I’d tell you,” he stated bluntly, “I’m ridin’ down to Doan’s. You won’t need me till night.”
Lew walked passed him and tossed his war bag into the cook’s wagon.
He turned back and said, “Not this trip,” and started on.
Splann’s surly growl jerked him around. “What the hell kind of a boss are you?”
He walked up close, his high shape coming above Ed Splann’s broader and more powerful build. He could feel the scar burn hot and red. But there were times like this when he let his voice come out of him in a slow drawl. “My friend,” he said, “I’ll tell you what kind of a boss I am. No man in my outfit fools me any. You don’t.”
He let it hang there, watching Splann weigh it behind his pale eyes. They narrowed coolly.
“You think you know something. What?”
“You’ve got no warning coming,” he said, his voice still held to that quiet way, “but I’ll warn you this much. I’d as leave have a rattlesnake in my bed as a spy and traitor in this camp. You don’t need to ride to Doan’s; I’ll see your friends for you. Is that clear?”
A wicked brightness leaped into Splann’s eyes. “You talk tough. You got anything to back it up? Show or lay down, Burnet. I’ve called your hand!”
He didn’t underestimate this man. There was the experienced gun fighter’s arrogance about him. He let his muscles go slack and ready and felt only that cool alertness as he said, “Any time.”
He could almost see the huge right shoulder begin its lift that would bring the gun up out of its holster. His own fi
ngers curved when Splann’s eyes went past his and swung back. A subtle change came over him.
He leaned forward a little, confiding, “Burnet, you stay clear. You’ve got a lot to learn, some things you don’t want to know. And you’ve got a lot to lose.”
His eyes moved again.
Footsteps crackled in the dry leaves, and then Joy called gaily, “Lew! Come and look!”
She passed beyond them looking pleased, with something bundled in her arms. She was barelegged and her long hair, washed and dried, was soft around her head.
Splann’s eyes followed her through the trees. Then they came back with a knowing shrewdness.
“You take my advice and you get your pay. One thing about you ain’t hard to read.” He wheeled and led his horse toward the picketed mounts.
Joy was up on her bed in the wagon, sitting cross-legged with both hands covering her lap.
“Lew—eggs!” She lifted her hands. “Turkey eggs. I found a nest!”
He leaned in to her and turned them with mock gravity. “Real eggs. Think of that.”
But it was her scrubbed fragrance he was aware of, her soft hair and skin that was warm and glowing. It put a tight quietness in him that was not mockery. Then she laid both of her hands on his.
The laughter was gone from her eyes. She looked up soberly. “Lew, I’ve been sorry about something. Dreadfully sorry. I mean back there when Steve went blind. I wasn’t hating you. It was only that everything seemed so wrong. I understand what you’re going through these days. I shouldn’t make it any harder.”
He pulled his hand from under hers. “I’ve never asked for pity, Joy, not from anyone. Let me pity myself if I want to. We all do that sometimes. But I don’t want it from outside.”
“This isn’t pity! Don’t you understand?”
Something turned her lips soft and gentle, parting them with a slow and even breath. Her dark eyes searched his face.
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