Matagorda

by Louis L'Amour

  Brunswick chewed his cigar. “Those cattle on the island are usually in good shape—lots of feed, and they don’t have to go far to water; but beef prices aren’t at their best now.”

  “I want a fast deal,” Tap said quietly, “and I’ve heard you’re a fair man.”

  Brunswick rolled his cigar in his lips. “I’ve got to ship to New Orleans. There’ll be some loss at sea.” He took a good look at Tap, and said, “I’ll give you twelve dollars a head, right across the board.”

  “Twelve dollars? Brunswick, there’s some steers in that lot who’ll weigh fifteen hundred pounds.”

  “Sure there are. And there’s probably forty, fifty head in there won’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. That’s mixed stuff.”

  “Make it sixteen?”

  Bob Brunswick shrugged. “Fourteen; and I’ll be lucky not to take a loss.”

  “All right, I’ll go along. You make the check for eight hundred head. If there’s less, I’ll make it up, and if there’s more—and there is—you can have them.”

  Brunswick sat down at the table and wrote the check and handed it to Duvarney. “There you are, Tap, and my regards to the little lady. She’s got sand, that girl.”

  “Thanks.” Duvarney hesitated. “Brunswick, you’ve been fair, so I’ll give you a piece of advice. Either get those cattle loaded and out to sea, or drive them inland—ten miles inland.”

  Brunswick took the cigar from his mouth. “What are you telling me?”

  “That’s hurricane weather out there. I can smell it.”

  “All right.” He paused. “Duvarney, your boys are moving those cattle. What do you say if you keep right on moving them? Start them toward Victoria, and hold them somewhere along Placedo Creek.”

  Tap considered. He had hoped to get his men right out of town to avoid trouble, yet he could scarcely leave Brunswick in the lurch, and finding cowhands at this hour of the night, or even tomorrow, would be difficult. Yet this might be the very best way…or it might be the worst.

  “I could hold them here,” Brunswick said. “If I get them penned up they can’t stampede.”

  “Have you ever seen a hurricane, Brunswick? I was a seaman in the West Indies and along the Atlantic coast for several years. This storm started some place far south of Cuba, maybe off the coast of Brazil, and she’s been moving north. Those winds will be blowing hard enough to flatten anything around here, but the whole storm won’t move more than fifteen miles an hour.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “The winds blow in a big circle, ten or twenty miles across. I don’t know that anybody ever measured one, but I’d guess a couple I ran into were that big.”

  Tap paused. “I’d move them,” he said again. “Somewhere back on the prairie, this side of Victoria.”

  “They’d have to go right through town. Have you ever seen cattle go through a town?”

  “They’re tired. I think they’d handle easy. You want to try it?”

  “Well…you’ve got my money. You made your deal. You’ve no reason to stay on unless you want to.”

  “I’ve already agreed. You pay the boys what you think the job is worth.” He pocketed the check. “Let’s go, then.”

  “You’d better see that little lady before you go. She’s worried.”

  Tap opened the door and glanced up and down the hall, then he stepped out. Almost at once, Jessica’s door opened.

  “Tap…oh, Tap!” He went to her, caught her hands.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “But now that you have come, you should get out. There’s going to be a storm.”

  “You go on. I’ll be all right.”

  She listened while he explained about moving the cattle. “If the storm looks bad, I’ll come back for you, but don’t wait here for me. If it starts to blow up, go to the courthouse. It’s on a knoll in the center of town, and the building is solid. If anything in town comes through all right, the courthouse will.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

  He went down the stairs and walked across the lighted lobby. Stepping out onto the walk, he came face to face with a tall, lean man.

  It was Jackson Huddy.

  Chapter 10

  *

  IN WESTERN TOWNS where the work begins at daybreak or earlier, supper is eaten early, and most good citizens are in bed before ten o’clock. It is only along the main streets where the saloons and the honky-tonks are that people drink and gamble far into the night.

  Indianola was in bed or preparing for it. The night was still and the air seemed close; there was something in the atmosphere that made animals restless and men irritable. There lay over the town and the flatlands beyond a breathless hush that seemed like a warning.

  The truth of the matter was that Indianola had not long to live. Here, within the space of a few hours, a town was to be destroyed, a way of living wiped out. And nobody was aware of it.

  Down along the two piers that thrust their long fingers into the bay waters, the masters of the few ships in port were nevously running out additional lines. The swell breaking on Matagorda Island had already become so great that getting through the channel would be a doubtful matter…nobody wanted to try it. And few seaports anywhere seemed more sheltered than Indianola.

  When Tappan Duvarney stepped out on the street and came face to face with Jackson Huddy there was a moment when neither man moved nor spoke. Then Jackson Huddy said, “You are driving Rafter K cattle.”

  “Some are Rafter K, some wear my own brand, but I am a businessman, Mr. Huddy, doing business in cattle. I have no interest in the Munson-Kittery feud, as I have said before this.”

  “How long before you’ll be drawn in?” Huddy asked.

  “That depends on the Munsons. If they move against me or my men, they must accept the consequences. If they do not move against us, they have nothing to fear.”

  “We do not fear, Major Duvarney.”

  “Do not disregard fear, Mr. Huddy. A little fear inspires caution. I have learned there is a little fear and a little caution in every victory. And from what I have heard of you, I had suspected you to be a cautious man.”

  “And what have you heard of me?” The small blue eyes were probing, curious, yet somehow they were strangely empty.

  “That you take no unnecessary chances; that to you victory is the result to be desired, and the method is less important.”

  “You do not like that?”

  Duvarney smiled. “Mr. Huddy, I cut my eyeteeth on the Apaches, the greatest guerilla fighters the world has ever seen, and I have had some dealings with the Sioux and the Cheyennes too. I found their methods very useful to me, and easily understood. As in all things, Mr. Huddy, the number of possibilities of attack is limited. One considers those that are manifestly impossible. They are eliminated, and the others prepared for. We killed or captured a lot of Apaches.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  Duvarney did not answer the question, but said, “Mr. Huddy, you have a certain reputation. Why risk it against a man who is not your enemy?”

  Deliberately, he walked past him and on down the street, moving easily, stepping lightly, ready to throw himself to right or left if the need arose, and picking one vantage point after another as he walked along. He had no idea that what he had said would matter in the long run, for Jackson Huddy would move as the situation seemed to dictate; yet he had to say what he could in an effort to prevent a gun battle that could kill good men and serve no one.

  *

  DOC BELDEN HAD reached the rendezvous point. The cattle were still moving, however. Tap rode out to swing alongside of him, riding point.

  “I’ve sold the cattle,” he said to Belden, “and we’re going inland, away from the storm. We’re taking them right down the main street.”

  “You’re taking a chance. If they stampede in town they could bust up a lot of stuff.”

  “They’re tired,” Tap said. “Also, I think they’re
ready to turn away from the sea. There’s a storm coming.”

  He paused, then added, “Pass the word along. Every man is to ride with the thong off his pistol. He must be ready to fight, if need be.”

  In the southeast the stars were gone, and the night sky showed a bulging, billowing mass of cloud that seemed to heave itself higher and higher against the sky as the moments passed. The cattle broke into a half-trot, settled back into a walk, and then began to trot again. Belden and Tap swung the point into the street.

  At the muffled thunder of hoofs, lights suddenly blazed and doors opened. A murmur, then a growl ran along the street, but though the cattle were tired, they were intent on moving, and they went silently, except for the beat of their hoofs in the dust, and the rustle of their sides against one another. Here and there horns clacked against each other; a cowboy, moving up on some recalcitrant steer, called “Ho!” They moved steadily on, keeping to the street.

  The people, watching, became silent. A few came out on the boardwalk to look at the sky when there was a far-off rumble of thunder.

  A gust of wind blew along the street, creaking signs, rattling shutters. A brief spatter of rain fell, then subsided. The night was perfectly still.

  The last of the cattle passed, and they vanished up the street.

  Jessica, standing in the dark by her window watching the street below, breathed softly in relief, scarcely believing it had been done. Then a door nearby opened and a tall man came out on the street, and she saw that it was Jackson Huddy. He was followed by another, a man with a slouching, lazily affected walk, who leaned against a post by the boardwalk and tood there with thumbs behind his belt. Out of the night two other men came up the street and joined them.

  Her light was out, her curtain unmoving, but Jackson Huddy twice turned his head to look up as if he felt the impact of her eyes. No matter what they planned, there was nothing she could do now—she could only wait.

  And then the wind came.

  It began with a wall-shuddering blast, and a quick spatter of rain. Jessica opened her window and pulled the shutters together and fastened them. She could hear others doing the same, and through a crack in the shutters she could see men on the street in their nightshirts or in hastily donned Levis putting up shutters, and in some cases nailing them down.

  She had not undressed, and suddenly she decided she would not.

  The old building creaked under the weight of the wind, and somewhere something slammed against a building and fell heavily against the boardwalk—probably one of the street signs. Looking through the cracks in the shutters, she could no longer see any lights, and suddenly she realized it was because of fear of fire.

  *

  OUTSIDE, LIGHTNING NOW flashed almost continuously, lighting the sky weirdly. The bulging clouds were lower than she had ever seen clouds before. She was frightened, and she admitted that to herself. But she remained calm, considering the situation.

  Nothing can be done about a storm. One takes what precautions one can, and then waits. Now Jessica lighted her lamp and placed it, turned low, on the floor, so that it could not be knocked from the table. Propping her pillows against the base of the bed, she got out a book of poetry and sat down to read, but after a minute she gave up. The roar of the wind was now terrific.

  Suddenly someone banged on her door and she went over to it, hesitating only a moment, to be sure she had the gun. Holding it in the folds of her skirt, she opened the door.

  Mady Coppinger stood there, soaked to the skin, gasping for breath, and wild with fear.

  “Please! Let me come in!”

  Jessica stepped back, and when Mady was inside, she closed the door and stood with her back against it.

  “Oh, I hope you’ll forgive me, but I had no place else to go!” Mady’s voice shook. “It’s awful out there—awful!”

  “You must get out of those clothes,” Jessica said practically. “I have some dry things you can wear.”

  Mady sat down, trembling. Her shoes and ankles were muddy, and she herself was literally drenched. Her hair had come undone and hung about her face and shoulders.

  Jessica asked no questions, offered no comment. She gave Mady towels, and when it did not appear that those she had would be adequate, she went across the hall to an empty room and took the towels she found there.

  Slowly Mady began to calm down. “It’s awful out there,” she repeated, almost to herself. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “You’d better change. We may have to leave the hotel. Tappan said we should go to the courthouse.”

  “It’s on higher ground,” Mady said. “Yes, I think we’d better.”

  She dressed hurriedly, but as she did so she was admiring the clothes she was putting on.

  Jessica listened to the wind. She went to the closet and took out her warmest coats, a mackintosh and an ulster. The mackintosh was rain-proof, or close to it; the ulster was heavier, and warm. She was trying to decide, even as she took down the coats, what was the best thing to do. Tappan’s advice was clear in her mind, but wouldn’t they say she was just a silly woman? And suppose the courthouse was closed?

  It was raining now, if one could call it that: a tremendous sheet of water was smashing down the narrow street, and she could feel the weight of it against the wall of the building. Even as she put on the mackintosh and prepared to leave the room, one part of her mind was wondering where Mady Coppinger had been and what she had been doing on such a night…And had her terror been only the terror of the storm?

  They went down the stairs, feeling the straining of the building, and into the lobby. They found themselves in a tight group of people. A few were whimpering in fear, but most were silent, listening to the terrible sound outside, hearing the thunder of the storm.

  Jessica pushed her way through them and they gave way, staring at her blankly.

  Near the door she saw the clerk standing with Mr. Brunswick and two other men, both of whom were solid-seeming men, those who are among the leaders in any community.

  “Mr. Brunswick?” He turned impatiently, then removed his hat. “Mr. Brunswick, can you let us out?” Jessica said.

  “In this? Ma’am, I wouldn’t let anybody out in a storm like this. There’s water almost knee-deep in the streets right now.”

  “Tappan…Major Duvarney…advised me to take shelter in the courthouse if the storm got worse. I believe we should go while we can.”

  “What’s Duvarney know about storms?” The speaker was an austere-looking man with a permanently disagreeable expression.

  “Major Duvarney was a seafaring man before he went into the army,” Jessica replied stiffly. “He was an officer on ships in the West Indian trade. He knows the sea, and he knows hurricanes.”

  Worriedly, the gray-haired man beside Brunswick asked, “Did he think this was going to be a hurricane?”

  “He told me there had been great swells breaking on Matagorda Island for several days, and such swells come only from a great storm at sea.” While she answered him her eyes looked at the street.

  Through the front windows, where some of the shutters had been blown away, she could see outside. The water was surging out there, and it was deep. Signs were down, and there was a scattering of debris lying across the walks. Even as she looked, some flying shingles whipped past the window.

  “I’ve never seen it this bad,” Mady said.

  The thirty or more people gathered in the lobby were staring at the storm. Only a few of them were dressed for what must lie ahead.

  “All right,” Brunswick said, “we’ll try it. We’ll have to stay close to the buildings where we can, and hang onto each other.”

  Suddenly there was a tremendous blast of wind that ripped the few remaining signs from the buildings along the street, and sailed them before it. At the same moment a great rush of water tore by, ripping up a part of the boardwalk and filling the street with a deeper rushing torrent.

  Now all lights were out. The town stood in darkness,
all sound drowned out by the whistling roar of the hurricane. Somewhere a sound did break through, a sound of splintering wood; and then the wall of a building hurtled past. The corner hit the door of the hotel and smashed a panel before the force of the water tore it free and sent it on.

  “We’ll never make it now,” the gray-haired man said solemnly.

  “We can make it, Crain,” Brunswick replied. “Let’s wait until this spell is over.”

  “If it ever is,” Mady said.

  Jessica was silent, thinking about Tappan. He was out there somewhere in that roaring world of wind and water. He was out there moving cattle in all this…or he was dead.

  *

  IT WAS TEN o’clock at night when the storm first came to Indianola, and by the time the full force of the wind was beginning to smash the town Tap Duvarney had his cattle several miles west of the town and was driving them hard.

  To the east, out over the Gulf, lightning flashed intermittently, showing great masses of wind-torn clouds.

  From out of the night, violence and the storm, and the vast thunder that rolled on and on, each enormous crash followed by another. From out of the night a moving wall of slashing rain, a wall of steel. The roof of clouds seemed only a few feet above the heads of the frightened cattle and the straining riders.

  Tap Duvarney had turned to look back, and was appalled. He could see the storm coming upon them. At the bottom it was a ragged cloud and the steel mesh of the rain; above, the massed black clouds were laced with lightning.

  “Look, Doc,” he said. “Look at that and you can tell them you’ve seen hell with the doors open.”

  Belden’s face was pale. “What do we do?” he asked.

  “Try to hold them in a bunch. That’s all we can do. It can’t last forever.”

  Lawton Bean pulled up alongside them, his face strangely yellowish in the odd light. “I wonder what’s happening back there in town,” he said. “One time when I was a kid I lived on Matagorda. I seen the sea break clean over the island. Dad and me, we made a run for it.”