Matagorda

by Louis L'Amour

  “I’ve heard of you,” the clerk commented. “Friend of Tom Kittery’s, aren’t you?”

  “Met him during the war,” Duvarney replied.

  “He come in with you? If he did, you might tell him Mady Coppinger’s in town.”

  Despite himself, Tap felt excitement. Was it because he hadn’t seen any woman in so long? Or—

  He shook himself to escape the thought, settled his hat in place, and went out. For a moment he paused in the doorway, his eyes studying the street. One of the ways to avoid trouble was to see it before it got to you.

  Doc Belden was still standing near the horses, smoking a small cigar. He was looking down the street toward the saloon, which Tap could not see. Almost without thinking, Tap reached up and unbuttoned his coat. He carried two guns, one in its holster, the other in his waistband.

  He walked directly to the horses and stood near Doc. “Everything all right?”

  Doc gave him a quizzical glance. “Half a dozen riders just pulled in…lathered horses…like maybe they’d hurried to get here.”

  “Mount up,” Tap said; “we’ll ride down and join the boys.”

  They tied the horses at the rail in front of the saloon, listening for voices. There were six horses tied nearby; all had been ridden hard, all bore the Circle M brand.

  “Sit loose in the saddle, Belden. This may be it, but let me open the ball.”

  They pushed through the swinging doors into the shadowed coolness of the saloon. Spicer was at the end of the bar, facing the room, and Jud Walker stood close by.

  Two of the Circle M riders stood well down the bar from Walker. Two others were seated at a table behind him but about fifteen feet away. The other two were down the room, but facing Walker and Spicer, boxing them neatly.

  Tap stepped to one side of the door, his eyes taking in the scene at a glance. Doc Belden had moved easily to the other side of the door.

  One of the men at the tables turned his head, squinting his eyes against the outside glare, to see who had come in. It was Shabbit.

  “How are you, boys?” Tap said quietly. “Let’s all have a drink, shall we?”

  The situation had suddenly reversed itself, and it was now the Munson party who were boxed. If they faced the two men at the bar they could not face the two at the door. And shooting against the sunlight was not too easy a thing.

  Shabbit hesitated, and the moment passed him by. “To the bar, gentlemen,” Tap insisted. “I’m buying the drinks. Bartender, set them up…right there.”

  He was pointing at the center of the bar, and he was pointing with a gun.

  Nobody had seen him draw it…it was simply there.

  One of the Munson men, whom Tap remembered from the graveyard, pushed back his chair and got up. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said coolly. “You ridin’ with the Kitterys now?”

  “I’m in the cattle business with Tom Kittery,” Tap replied calmly. “I’m not mixed up in any feud, and don’t intend to be.”

  As the first man started to the bar a second man got up. Shabbit was the last to move, muttering under his breath. When all had lined up along the bar and their drinks were poured, Duvarney motioned Walker and Spicer back to the door. Then he went to the bar and paid for the drinks.

  “Oblige me, gentlemen,” he said, “and stay with your drinks. My finger is very touchy on the trigger, and I’ll need at least ten minutes to complete my business here. I would regret killing a man for merely putting his head out of the door.”

  Retreating to their horses, they mounted and walked them slowly down the street. They left town on the road to Victoria, but soon turned off it and went toward the San Antonio River. It was after dark when they made camp in the breaks along the San Antonio, and before daylight they were moving again. By late morning they were riding into Victoria.

  Spicer and Walker stayed with the horses, while Duvarney and Doc Belden walked down the street. Mady Coppinger was on the boardwalk on the other side. Tap crossed over, removed his hat, and bowed.

  “Miss Coppinger?” he said. “It is good to see you again.”

  His eyes went up and down the street, scanning the buildings, even the second-story windows.

  “I don’t understand you, Major Duvarney. Why would a man like you want to come to Texas? Tom says you have connections in Virginia, that you’ve lived all over, know all sorts of people.”

  “I like Texas.”

  “You like it? I find that hard to believe.”

  “It’s a man’s country, I will admit, but you would find the cities less attractive after you had been there a while.”

  “Anything is better than this,” she replied. “I wish…I wish I could just move away and never see it again. You men may like the dust, the cattle, the sweating horses…I don’t. I want to be where there’s life…excitement.”

  “You would find it just as dull there after a while,” Tap commented. His eyes swept the street again. “Have you time to eat with me? I see there’s a restaurant up the street, and I’d be pleased if you’d be my guest.”

  “I’d like that very much,” she agreed, “after I get some things I need.” While she went on down the street to do her shopping, Tap Duvarney walked back to the horses.

  “We’ll be in town for a bit,” he said. “I’m going to have dinner with Miss Coppinger.”

  “You sure do pick ’em, Major,” Walker said, grinning. “That’s a mighty handsome figure of a woman.”

  “She’s spoken for,” Duvarney replied shortly. “That is the girl Tom Kittery is going to marry.”

  “You’d never know it, the way she was lookin’ at you,” Jud commented. “But that’s none of my affair.” He looked around uneasily. “You want us to stay close? I smell trouble.”

  “There’s a grove of pecans on the edge of town. After you boys do whatever buying there’s to do, meet me there…in an hour.”

  Welt Spicer hesitated. “You sure you don’t want us to stay by you? I’ve heard tell this here is a Munson town.”

  “No…just be there when I come. I’ll be all right.”

  The restaurant was a small place, with white curtains at the windows and white tablecloths and napkins. Mady came in a moment after he arrived, moving gracefully. Her eyes lighted up when she saw him. “You may not believe this,” she said, “but I’ve lived near Victoria all my life and this is only the second time I have eaten here.”

  He glanced at her thoughtfully. She was uncommonly pretty, and especially so today. She was, he thought, one of those girls who love company, who like to be going and doing. There was little chance of that on a cattle range.

  “But you’re in town often,” he protested. “Where do you eat?”

  “We bring our lunch. But sometimes we eat at the home of friends.” She looked up, her blue eyes resentful. “You haven’t been here long enough to know, Major Duvarney, but cash money is hard to come by in Texas these days. My father has more cattle than most folks around Victoria, but he sees very little cash money. I had to skimp and save to make that trip to New Orleans. Not that pa isn’t well off,” she added. “It’s just the way things are in Texas.”

  She looked unhappy, and it caused him to wonder about her relationship to Tom Kittery. Tom was the sort of man who would appeal to women. He was tall and well set-up, he carried himself with a manner, and had an easy, devil-may-care way about him. His family had standing in East Texas, and but for the feud might have been living in prosperity…on a par with her own family.

  Obviously, that was not enough for Mady Coppinger. She wanted the life of the city and its real or fancied excitements. Her one brief visit had only served to whet her appetite for more, and had been brief enough to bring no disillusionment. Such a girl was the last person in the world for Tom Kittery, a man committed by birth and inclination to the wilder West.

  “Cities aren’t the way you seem to think them,” he said, “and most of the people living there have no part of what is supposed to be the glamour and the excitement. You
probably have a better life and a more interesting life right here.”

  They talked on, and in spite of himself he was led to talk of New York and Washington, of Richmond and Charleston. The time went by too quickly, and more than an hour had passed before he broke away and joined his men, who were growing restive.

  He had learned a little. Mady was in love with Tom, but was torn between her love for him and her desire to be rid of Texas and all it stood for. She loved him in her way, but she wanted him away from Texas, and she doubted his ability to win the feud. The fighting itself disturbed her less than he expected, yet somewhere, somehow, she had been offered some powerful and fairly consistent arguments to indicate that Tom had no chance of winning.

  He had a feeling that when she talked of this she was not using her own words, but words she had heard. From her father, perhaps? Or from somebody else? Had Tom any inkling of her doubts? Or that there might be some who lacked faith, someone close to Mady or himself?

  He had no doubt that somebody had informed the Munsons that he and his men had ridden to Refugio the day before. Those hard-ridden horses were hard to explain in any other way.

  Somebody had informed the Munsons in time for them to get some fighting men to Refugio. That they had failed in their mission was largely due to the fact that they had failed to catch Duvarney and his men together in a single group.

  Tap Duvarney had lived too long to trust anyone too much. It was his nature to like people, but also to understand that many men are weak, and some are strong. In the rough life of the frontier strengths and weaknesses crop out in most unexpected places, and there is less chance to conceal defects of character that in a less demanding world might never become known…even to their possessor.

  Someone close to Tom Kittery, someone whom he trusted, was betraying him. It would pay to ride carefully and to study the trail sign before revealing too much to anyone.

  Riding back to the hide-out in the brush, Tap Duvarney considered his moves with care, trying to foresee the moves the enemy would make, and to plan his own accordingly.

  They must do the unexpected, always the unexpected.

  Tom Kittery got up from the fire and approached as Tap swung down. “We’ll drive for Kansas,” Tap said, “and we’ll start day after tomorrow.”

  Chapter 6

  *

  OVER THE SULLEN coals of a mesquite-root fire, Tap Duvarney told his men: “Roll out at first light, bunch on Matagorda, and sweep south. Start about here.” He drew a rough map of the island. “Push down and swim them over to here.”

  He turned to Kittery. “Tom, how about you taking your boys and sweeping kind of east by north from Copano Creek? Scatter out and gather what you can, but waste no time chasing the tough old ones.

  “Darkly Foster can take Shannon, Lahey, and Gallagher over to the tip of Black Jack Peninsula and drive north. We’ll work fast and we’ll miss a lot of stuff, but we should rendezvous on Horseshoe Lake with a good-sized herd.”

  Kittery nodded. “Seems likely. How about you?”

  “I’ll take Doc, Lawton Bean, Spicer, and Jule Simms over to the island. Walker and Porter can work with you.”

  “You’ll never make it. Not in the time you’re givin’ us. That’s a whole lot of country.”

  “I know it is, and we can’t make a clean sweep. Just start driving and keep moving. What we get we’ll take, and what’s left we can get the next time.”

  “All right, Major,” Kittery said ironically, “you’re givin’ the orders.”

  Breck and Dubec stared stubbornly at the ground, ignoring Tap. The Cajun showed no feeling one way or the other. Tap said mildly, “If we all do our part, this should be quite a drive. We’ll slip out of here without a fight.”

  Lubec laughed contemptuously. “You don’t know them Munsons, Major.” Lubec emphasized the title. “They’ll wait until you bunch your stock and they’ll move. You’ll see.”

  “I hope you’ll be there shooting when they do, Johnny,” Tap replied pleasantly. “Now I’m going to hit the hay. I’m tired.”

  Slowly, they drifted away to their beds, all but Breck, Lubec, and Kittery.

  “They don’t like it much, Major,” Spicer whispered, “you takin’ command like this.”

  The night was still. The crickets’ chirping was the only sound. Tap clasped his hands behind his head and stared up at the stars, which winked occasionally through the black mantilla formed by the branches and leaves overhead. He liked the smell of the earth, the trees, the coolness of a soft wind from off the Gulf.

  Despite his outward assurance, he was far from confident. There were too many things that could happen, too many things to go wrong, and there was too much that was doubtful about his own relationship with Tom Kittery.

  The man was moody and solitary, and when not alone he kept close to those who had been with him from the beginning. The bitterness of the feud was upon him, the memory of good men dead, of his burned-out home, of the graves of his family. Nor could Tap blame him. In Tom’s place, he too would have fought. But he was not in Tom’s place.

  His future lay in that herd of cattle they were to gather, his future and perhaps that of Jessica. He wanted to return to her without empty hands, and if he could not return that way, he made up his mind suddenly, he would not go back at all.

  He was too proud to accept a position from her family, or from friends of either his family or hers. His father and grandfather had walked proudly, had made their own way, and so would he make his. He could return to the service, but he knew what it meant—fighting Indians or living out a dull existence on some small post on the frontier.

  With the few men they had, they could not hope to make anything like a clean sweep. They could only do their best, then move the herd; with luck they would get out without a fight. He was not at all as hopeful of that as he had sounded at the campfire.

  Finally he slept. In the night he stirred restlessly, the sea in his bones responding to something on the wind, some faint whisper from out over the wastes of the ocean. Something was happening out there, something he knew by his instincts. Several times he muttered in his sleep, and when he awakened he was not refreshed.

  The Cajun was at the fire. Did the man never sleep at all? He looked up at Duvarney and, taking his cup from his hand, filled it from the coffeepot.

  Brooding, the Cajun sipped at his coffee. Presently he glanced around at Duvarney. He nodded to indicate a huge log that lay over against the edge of the clearing. It was an old log measuring at least four feet through, and was perhaps sixty feet in length.

  “He big tree…grow far off.”

  Tap Duvarney looked at the log. It certainly was larger than anything he had seen along the Gulf Coast, although there might be something as big in the piney woods to the north.

  “How did it get here?”

  The Cajun jerked his head toward the Gulf. “Storm. Big storm bring him on the sea.”

  Tap looked at the log again. They were at least five miles from the Gulf Coast. To come here by sea, that log would have to cross Matagorda Island and then be carried this far inland.

  “Have you seen the sea come this far in?”

  “One time I see. My papa see, also. One time there was a ship back there.” He turned and pointed still further inland. “Very old ship. It was there before my grandpa.”

  The Cajun relapsed into silence over his coffee. There was no light in the sky, but a glance at his watch showed Duvarney that the hour was four in the morning. When he had finished his coffee he went out and caught up his horse, then bridled and saddled him.

  Standing beside the horse, he thought over the plans he had made. There was much about them he did not like, but he could see no alternative that would improve the situation.

  The night coolness had gone. The air was still, and it was growing warmer. He led his horse back and tied him to a tree not far from the fire.

  He accepted a plate of beef and beans from the Cajun, and ate while the others cra
wled sleepily from their beds. It was going to be a long, hard day.

  There is no creature on the face of the earth more contrary than the common cow. Not so difficult as a mule, not so mean or vicious as a camel, the cow beast can nevertheless exhaust the patience of a Job.

  Duvarney and his men started on the island, and contrary to his announced intention, they did not drive south, but north.

  It was not until they reached the island that Tap pulled up and hooked a leg around the saddle-horn. He pushed his hat back and got a small cigar from his pocket. “We’re going to do a little different from what I said.” He paused to strike a match. “We’re going to drive the cattle north, cross from the tip of the island over to the mainland, at low tide or close to it, and take our part of the herd right into Indianola.”

  “Suits me,” Spicer commented.

  “Me too,” Doc said. “We’ll get to town that much sooner.”

  “Somebody,” Duvarney went on, “has talked too much, or else somebody has too much confidence in their friends. So if you should meet anybody, don’t let them get the idea we’re driving north.”

  “That’s marshy country,” Jule Simms said doubtfully. “We’re liable to bog down the herd.”

  Tap reached into his saddlebag and brought out a folded chart, now much crumpled. “Look here,” he pointed. “This is an old smugglers’ trail. It was an Indian trail before that. We’ll have to watch the herd, but if we keep them on that trail we can go right through.”

  They scattered out and began to work back and forth across the island, pointing the cattle north. Here and there other brands were found, and those they cut out and turned back. It was slow, painstaking work. The cattle were loath to be driven, stubbornly resisting, and a few were allowed to go.

  The weather was hot and sultry. Not a breath of air circulated among the low-growing brush, or moved in from the sullen sea. Tap mopped his face again and again, fighting the flies, but he kept driving the cattle out. By noon they had a good-sized herd moving up the island ahead of them.