Matagorda

by Louis L'Amour

  After this neither man spoke for several miles, and there was no sound but the clop-clop of the horses’ hoofs and the jangle of the harness. Johnny Lubec had pulled off and ridden away into the brush. When he returned an hour or so later, he was leading a saddled horse, a tough-looking buckskin with a black mane and tail.

  “We’ll leave the rig,” Tom said to Duvarney. “You’ll ride the buckskin.”

  Tap Duvarney looked doubtfully at the horse, which rolled an inquisitive eye at him as if it had already been informed who its rider was to be, but Tap pulled up and swung down.

  “What about the team?”

  “We’ll take off the harness and turn ’em loose. The buckboard can stay right here in the brush until we have reason to pick it up.”

  Taking the reins, he drove the buckboard into the brush. Tap took his gear from the wagon, then gestured at the supplies. “I’ll need those,” he said.

  Kittery noticed the ammunition boxes for the first time. “You figure on usin’ all that? What you goin’ to do? Fight all the Indians in the Nation?”

  Tap shrugged. “They told me you were in a feud. It isn’t my fight, but if somebody starts shooting at me I want to be able to shoot back as long as I’m in the mood.”

  Lubec merely looked at him, while the Cajun took the boxes from the wagon-bed and placed them on the ground. He went to the seat, and from under it he took the sack of oats and dumped what remained on the ground. Then he filled the canvas sack with the contents of the boxes.

  With all the packages and sacks loaded behind their saddles and the mustangs turned loose to go home, they took off through the scattered brush and trees. Several times they passed through extensive stretches of prickly pear, and twice they followed stream courses, keeping under the cottonwoods and pecans for concealment.

  It was sundown when they rode into a small clearing. For several miles they had been moving through thick brush and timber, and the clearing came as a surprise. There was a small fire going, and three men were standing nearby, all with rifles.

  “Howdy, Tom!” A stocky, barrel-chested man with a black beard walked toward them. “Johnny? Howdy, Cajun.”

  He smiled as he saw Duvarney. “How are you, Major? I never had the luck to run into you during the war, but we came nigh it a time or two. I am Joe Breck.”

  “You’re Captain Joseph Breck? I remember your outfit, sir. I am just as glad we missed our meetings. You had some good men.”

  Breck smiled. “I’ve still got a couple of them, and one of yours.”

  “Mine? Who?”

  “Me, Major.” A tall, ungainly man with a large Adam’s apple stepped from behind a horse he was grooming. “Corporal Welt Spicer.”

  Duvarney grinned. “How are you, Spicer? I’m not likely to forget you.” He looked around at Kittery. “Did he tell you? He was in my outfit. We covered a lot of country together.”

  Kittery threw a sharp look at Spicer, but made no comment.

  The hide-out was a good, if temporary, one. It was on a small knoll in a dense growth of brush; tunnels through the brush showed their dark openings here and there. Obviously the thicket was a network of underbrush passageways and trails. A small spring was nearby, and although the water was brackish, it was potable.

  “What’s on the program. Tom?” Breck asked.

  “We hunt cattle,” Kittery replied shortly. “We start at daybreak. We’ll make up a herd and strike out for Kansas.”

  They looked at him, but nobody offered a comment. A few minutes later, Duvarney caught Breck studying Kittery with care. Obviously, Tap thought grimly, he had altered their plans, and they didn’t like it.

  Tired from the long riding, he rolled up in his blankets. The last he remembered was seeing the others huddled around the fire, drinking coffee and talking in low tones.

  Well, he reflected, let them talk. Tomorrow they work cattle.

  Chapter 4

  *

  FOR THREE DAYS they kept at it, daylight to dark, working the cattle out of the brush, branding them and bunching them at a clearing in the woods that consisted of several hundred acres of good grass, with a trickle of water running across one corner. A few of the cattle still wore the Kittery brand, but most were mavericks.

  The work was hard, punishing, and hot, yet they made time. Tap Duvarney had never worked cattle before except on the few occasions when he had hazed a small herd into an Indian camp that was being fed by the government, or when it was cattle to be beefed for the army itself. However, he had watched a lot of cowhands work on the range, and had listened to them yarning over campfires. As he could match none of these men with a rope, he devoted his time to finding the cattle and driving them from the brush or the grassy hollows. By the end of the fourth day they were holding four hundred head of mixed stuff, and their horses were played out.

  Most of the cattle had been found within a few miles, but they were wild, some of them being old mossy-horns that had lived back in the brush for years. These made most of the trouble. At first it was not much more than a matter of riding around the cattle and slowly bunching them; but the older stock would have none of that. Time and again some of the mossy-horns would break for the brush, and it was hard work, and hot work, rousting them out again.

  There was no chuck wagon. Every rider carried a small bait of grub in a sack behind his saddle, and ate his noonday meal out on the range…if he had time.

  On the evening of the fourth day, Kittery said, “We’ve got to ride for horses. We’ll need about forty head, and the nighest place is over to Coppinger’s.”

  “Give you a chance to see Mady,” Johnny Lubec said, grinning. “Want I should go along to kind of cool you off after you leave there?”

  “I wouldn’t trust you. Ever’ time we get near the C-Bar, you head for those Mex jackals down in the wash. I think you’ve got eyes for that little Cortinas girl.”

  Lubec made no comment, and Kittery said, “All right. We’ll ride out at daybreak. Johnny, you can come, and I’ll take Pete and Roy.” Then he glanced over at Duvarney. “You want to come, Tap?”

  “I’ll stay here.”

  After they had gone, Duvarney worked over his guns and equipment, then saddled up to ride out. “I’m going to scout around,” he said to the others. “I may drive a few cattle if I see them, but I’m going for a reconaissance.”

  Welt Spicer got to his feet. “Mind if I trail along?”

  “All right with me.”

  The Cajun watched them with eyes that told nothing, but Joe Breck looked at Duvarney and said, “You be careful. There’s Munsons around, and if they see you they’ll shoot first an’ ask questions afterward.”

  When they’d been a few minutes on the trail, Welt Spicer commented, “We’re nigh Copano Creek. Empties into the bay yonder.”

  “Mission Bay?”

  “Copano. Mission’s smaller, and opens into Copano Bay.…You ever been in this country?”

  “No, this is my first time east of the Brazos in Texas. But I’ve seen the maps.”

  The trail was narrow. Only one rider could follow it at a time, the other trailing behind. Branches brushed them on either side. It was hot and still. The only sound except the muffled fall of their horses’ hoofs was the hum of insects or the occasional cry of a bird. Sweat trickled down Duvarney’s face and down his body under his shirt. Sometimes they saw the tracks of cattle. Cow trails branched off from time to time, but the riders held to the main trail.

  They came on Copano Creek unexpectedly. It was a fair-sized stream, with many twists and turns. Both men dismounted and drank upstream from their horses. The water was clear, and not unpleasant.

  “Low tide,” Spicer said. “At high tide you can’t drink it.” He squatted on his heels and took a small Spanish cigar from his pocket. “You got your work cut out for you, Major.”

  “Call me Tap.”

  “That Tom, now. He’s a mighty good man, but he’s mad. He’s Munson-killing mad, and so are the others. All of ’em wan
t to fight, not run cattle.”

  “How about you?”

  “I’ll string along with you. I figure we’re a sight better off drivin’ cows to Kansas.” Spicer pushed his hat back so he could see Tap’s face without tilting his head. “You’re goin’ to need men—men you can depend on.”

  It had been that way in the army. There had always been men he could depend on, the right sort of men in the right places when they were needed, and they made easier whatever needed to be done. His had been the responsibility of command, of decision. There had always been the sergeants, many of them veterans of the War Between the States as well as of Indian fighting. They were tough, dependable men. Now he was alone.

  Somehow he had to hold the reluctant men to putting the herd together, somehow he had to get them started on the trail to Kansas. He had to ride roughshod over their resentment of him, over their hatreds, their reluctance to leave a fight unfinished. It had been easy enough when he had tough non-coms to whom he could relay his orders, and enlisted men whose duty it was to obey. This was different.

  He was going to have to get the herd together faster than they had planned, get it ready to move before they expected it. If he started the herd they must come along, like it or not.

  “Spicer, you’re right. I will need some men. You’ve been around here a while…where can I find them?”

  “Fort Brown…Brownsville. I happen to know they’re breakin’ up a cavalry outfit down there, and there’ll be some good men on the loose. As far as that goes, there are always a few hands around Brownsville or Matamoras, anyway.”

  “All right, Spicer. You ride down there. Pick maybe ten good men, thirty a month and found. Tell ’em they may have to fight. But they are hiring out to me—and to me only. You know the kind of men I want. Men like we had in the old outfit.”

  “It’ll take me a week at least. Ten days, more likely.”

  “Take two weeks if need be, but get the men and get them back up here.”

  After Welt Spicer had gone, Duvarney rode on along the trail, emerging finally on the lower Copano, and following it along to the bay. He saw cattle from time to time; most of them were unbranded, a few were wearing the Kittery brand, and there was a scattering of other brands unfamiliar to him.

  The creek ended in a small inlet, and he cut across to the bay itself. Copano Bay was almost landlocked. From his saddlebag Duvarney took the chart Wilkes had given him and studied the bay, its opening into Aransas Bay, and the island beyond. All this country was low, probably less than twenty feet above sea level, and much of it was certainly less than half of that.

  He made a camp on the shore of the bay, made coffee, and chewed on some jerked beef. He went to sleep listening to the sound of the salt water rippling on the sand, and smelling it. At daybreak he was up, drank coffee, and rode off toward the northeast along the coast.

  Several times he saw cattle, and as on the previous day he started them drifting ahead of him, pointing them toward the roundup area. They might not go far, but he might be able to drift some into the country to be covered for the drive. He swam his horse across the inlet at the mouth of the creek and made a swing south to check for cattle tracks on the peninsula that separated Copano from St. Charles Bay. He found a good many, and worked his way back to camp.

  Joe Breck was on his feet, rifle in hand, when Tap rode in. “I wondered what happened to you. Where’s Spicer?”

  “Sent him down to Brownsville.”

  “You sent him where?” Without waiting for an answer, Breck went on, “Tom won’t like that.”

  “He’ll like it.” Duvarney spoke shortly. “There are a lot of cattle on the peninsula east of us. We’ll drift some of this lot in there.”

  “Wait and see what Tom says,” Breck objected. “He’s got his own ideas.”

  “And I have mine. We’ll start drifting them in the morning.”

  Breck stared at him, his eyes level, but Tap ignored the stare and went about getting his bed ready for the night.

  “I’ll wait and see what Kittery says,” Breck said. “He hired me.”

  “You wait, and then tell him to pay you what you have coming. You won’t be working with us anymore.”

  “For a new hand,” Breck said, “you swing a wide loop.”

  “Breck,” Duvarney replied, “you’re a good man, too good a man to get your back up over nothing. You want to fight the Munsons; but if you do, do it on your own time. They’re no damned business of mine, and I’m going to drive cattle. I’ve got money tied up in this drive, and I can’t work up any interest in somebody else’s fight.”

  “It may get to be your fight, too.”

  “Not if it interferes with this cattle drive. Get one thing through your head. These cattle go to Kansas. If anybody gets in the way, and that means you or the Munsons, I’ll drive right over them.”

  Breck gave him a hard look, but Duvarney paid no attention to it. He rolled up in his bed, and slept.

  At daybreak the Cajun had a fire going and coffee on. Duvarney joined him. “Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked.

  The Cajun grinned; it was the first time Tap had seen any expression on his face. “Time to time,” he said. He reached for the pot and filled Tap’s cup. “Where do you think we should start?”

  Duvarney drew a rough line in the sand. “Ride southeast, start sweeping the cattle north, then turn them into the peninsula.”

  Joe Breck came up to the fire wearing his chaps and spurs. Thirty minutes later they all rode south to begin working the brush.

  It was a wide stretch of country. They rode back and forth, making enough noise to start the cattle moving out of the brush to get away from them, then pushing them toward the cattle trails that led to the peninsula. Some of them would move along those familiar trails easily enough, but a few would be balky. It was little enough the three men could do; but working in that way, there was the chance they could move quite a few head.

  It was hot and sticky in the brush. Not a breath of air stirred. From time to time Duvarney found himself pulling up to give his horse a breather, and each time he did so he turned in the saddle to study the sky. It was clear and blue, with only a few scattered clouds.

  They came together on the banks of a small creek flowing into St. Charles Bay, where they made coffee, ate, and napped a little. Through the afternoon they worked steadily, and drifted back into camp at sundown, dead tired.

  “We covered some country,” Breck commented, “and we moved a lot of beef—more’n I expected.”

  Tap nodded. He was no longer thinking of cattle. His thoughts had turned back to Virginia, and to the quiet night when he had said good-bye to Jessica Trescott.

  Old Judge Trescott, who had known his father—had in fact been his father’s attorney—had offered him a job. There were half a dozen others, too, who came up with offers, partly because of his father, and partly because he was to marry Judge Trescott’s daughter. He would have none of it. He would take what cash he had, make it his own way.

  Was it a desire for independence that brought him west? Or a love of the country itself? Everything he had grown up with was back there in the coast country of Virginia and the Carolinas. His father and his grandfather had operated ships there since before Revolutionary times. There had been Duvarneys trading to the Indies when George III denied them the right. In those days they had smuggled their goods. Duvarneys had been privateers during the Revolution and the War of 1812.

  His was an old family on that coast. His service in the War Between the States had been distinguished; on the Indian frontier it had been exceptional in many respects. His position in Virginia was a respected one, and many doors were open to him. Yet he had left. He pulled his stakes and headed west again, to the country he had come to know.

  Now here he was, struggling to get a herd together, and so deeply involved that he could not get out of it.

  Jessica had rested her hands on his arms that night. “Tappan, if you don’t come back soon I’ll come a
fter you. No Trescott ever lost a man to a sandy country, and I’m not going to be the first.”

  “It’s no country for a woman,” he had objected. “You wait. After I’ve made the drive and have some cash money, we’ll talk.”

  “You mind what I say, Tappan Duvarney. If you don’t come back, I’ll come after you!”

  He had laughed, kissed her lightly, and left. Perhaps he had been a fool. A man would never find a girl like that in this country. Not even Mady Coppinger.

  Tom Kittery would be seeing Mady about now. He was a lucky man, Tap was thinking, a very lucky man.

  “Somebody coming,” the Cajun said, and vanished into the brush with no more sound than a trail of smoke from the campfire.

  Tap listened, and after a moment he heard the faint sounds. One horse, with a rider—a horse that came on steadily at a fair pace and was surely ridden.

  He got up and moved back from the flames, and the others did the same.

  The rider came on, then drew up while still out in the darkness. “Halloo, the fire! I’m riding friendly, and I’m coming in with my hands empty.”

  Nobody spoke, and the stranger’s horse started to walk: After a moment they could see the rider. He was a stocky, thick-shouldered man with a wide face. Both hands were in the air.

  He rode into the firelight and stopped, his hands still held shoulder-high. “I’m hunting Major Duvarney,” he said. “Is he here?”

  Tap stepped out. “I am Tappan Duvarney.”

  “And I am Darkly Foster, brother to Lightly Foster, the man you buried at Indianola.”

  “I know him,” Breck said to Duvarney. “He’s all right.”

  “’Light, and move up to the fire,” Tap said. “There’s coffee on.”

  He watched the man lower his hands, and then step down from the horse. It was a fine animal, and Darkly Foster himself moved with a quick ease that told of strong muscles beneath the homespun clothes. “I am sorry about your brother,” Tap said.