Callahan dropped from his horse and brought his saddlebags with him. “Let me at him. I’ve had something to do with this sort of thing.”
McCarthy and Helvie were looking at the outlaws. Mort Ruff got slowly to his feet. “Charlie’s hurt bad,” he said. “Can you help him?”
“I’ll try,” Helvie said.
Bud Talrim was dead.
“We’d better report this,” Chantry said.
Sparrow looked at him. “To whom? There isn’t any law within a hundred and fifty miles that I know of. You report it if you like. I’m going to forget it.”
McKay and Gent were pulling poles from the roof of the house. “We’ll make some travois, like the Indians use,” McKay said. “Carry the wounded back.”
“I can ride,” Sparrow said. “We’ll need just two, for Williams and Charlie Ruff.”
Suddenly Doris looked up. “Where’s Sarah?”
Chantry looked blank. Nobody had thought of Sarah.
She was gone. Two horses were gone, and the money was gone.
Mobile started for his horse. “We’ll find her. Come on, Bone.”
“All right if I come?” Helvie asked.
They rode out, and Chantry watched them go.
Somehow the money did not seem so important now, although he knew it was. It was Earnshaw’s future, Doris’ future, and his.
But was it? They could start over. Out here that was possible. A setback was only that. Nothing to put a man down. You took such things, accepted them, and went on from there. It was a matter of the mind, that was all. If you weren’t whipped in your mind, nothing could whip you.
“Let’s get on with it,” Tom Chantry said. “Back to the railroad.”
Had there ever been a time when he was not riding toward the railroad?
Chapter Twenty-Three
SARAH MILLIER was vastly content. She was safely away with two horses and all the gold. She had a good rifle, a pistol, and a map.
The map showed the location of the Arkansas River, it showed Trinidad to the west, Tascosa to the southeast. It was drawn on a piece of tablet paper, and Tascosa looked reassuringly close.
There was a stage from there to Fort Griffin and points east, and her horses were fresh. She would ride to Tascosa, catch the stage, go east to the railroad, then to New York; and within a matter of a few weeks she would be in Paris with nearly fifty thousand dollars in gold.
Nothing on the map said anything about the Llano Estacado … the Staked Plain.
Nor did it mention distance, nor the factor of time. She had just asked a man in Trinidad to show her how the places lay in respect to each other. She had said nothing to him about the fact that she might want to ride over that country.
She had the gold and she was safely away, and if anyone had survived that shooting back there they would be having trouble enough without following her. She rode blithely south, and a little east.
The day was warm and pleasant, and she made good time. By nightfall, when she camped on Wild Horse Creek, she had put twenty-five miles behind her.
There was a good bit of water in Wild Horse Creek, and she drank and her horses drank. There was food in the saddlebags, so she ate. Another hard day’s ride, she thought, and she would be in Tascosa. That was the way it looked on her map.
Sarah had no canteen, nor did she realize the need for one. She had no idea that Wild Horse Creek was more often dry than otherwise. The next day she started out at daybreak, alternately walking or cantering.
At noon she was far out on a wide plain of sparse grass, with nothing in sight anywhere. Her horse no longer cantered, but was content to walk. A light wind began to blow, the sky was clear, the sun warm. She was thirsty, but unworried. When she saw brush ahead she knew it was a creek. Half an hour later she sat her horse in the dry bed of that creek. There was no water, no sign of any. She pushed on.
The pack horse carrying the gold lagged, and impatiently she tugged on the lead rope.
She rode on, into the sun-lit afternoon. Tascosa could not be far away now. The distance on the map the man had drawn had seemed so small, and she had no idea that she would never see Tascosa, that it was far away beyond the horizon, beyond many horizons, and that in all the land between water was scarce, even for those who knew where to look. Shortly before sundown she came upon the bones of cattle, and after that she saw them frequently.
Finally, unable to go on, she got down, tied her horse to several skulls pulled together, and slept. Before morning she awoke. Her throat was dry, and she was scarcely able to swallow.
She walked until the sun came up, then got into the saddle. She could see that her horses were suffering, the pack horse most, for the gold was heavy and a dead weight.
When the sun was high she looked all around her, and saw nothing but an endless plain, level as a floor, it seemed. She found water holes where the earth was cracked from the heat, but no water.
She came at last to a river bed. Instantly, her heart leaped with excitement. Tascosa was on the Canadian. This must be it!
She was going to make it, after all!
The bed was dry. The Cimarron, still far to the north of the Canadian, was often dry. She turned upstream, and after plodding for some distance she found a small pool behind a natural dam formed of rocks and brush. She drank. The water was bad, but she drank. And the horses drank, and the water was gone. In the shade of some brush she lay down to rest, after tying the horses to the brush.
She slept like something dead, then was awakened by the sun on her face.
The pack horse was gone. The branch to which it had been tied was broken. Her horse, tied more securely, had not gotten free.
There was a myriad of tracks of buffalo or cattle or something. Among them all she could not make out which were those of the horse, for the sand was soft and left no well-defined print.
She rode on upstream, found another miniature pool, drank and let the horse drink, then scrambled him up the bank. Seeing a low knoll, she rode to the top.
She stared, and a dreadful emptiness crept into her, for wherever she looked there was nothing, only the vast plain that swept away to the horizon. Never in all her life had she seen or imagined anything like this. It was a vast brown sea, rolling endlessly away.
There was no movement anywhere, no sign of life.
Something seemed to shrink inside her. She no longer even thought of the gold, only of life. Nothing in all her years had prepared her for this.
Yet she must keep on. It could not be far.
Surely, surely, it must be close.
She turned the horse down the slope and headed south.
On the fifth day, Mobile Callahan sighted the pack horse. It was standing alone, head hanging. When they rode up they could see the pack had slipped around until it was under the horse’s belly.
They cut the pack away, gave the horse a drink from water poured into the crown of a hat, then dividing the gold between their horses, and leading the pack horse, they turned back.
Bone McCarthy, standing in his stirrups, looked all around. “Beats all,” he muttered. “Where do you figure she thought she was goin’?
Ain’t nothing off that way for miles!”
“Lost, maybe. Only she surely held to her course.”
“What d’you think?”
“Figure it out for yourself. She had no water with her, and besides, water’s too far apart in this country. I’d say she was dead.”
“Come on. Packin’ all this gold we’ll be lucky to make it back ourselves.”
****
THIRTEEN YEARS later, two cowboys hunting strays in the lonely lands where the Panhandle of Oklahoma gives way to the Panhandle of Texas, came on some bones.
“Hey, Sam. Looka here!”
Sam rode over, looked into the shallow place behind the clump of bear grass. “What d’ya know?
Woman, too.”
“White woman.” The first cowhand indicated the twisted leather of a boot sole and heel. He held up a finger bone. On it
was a gold ring with a diamond—or what looked like one.
“What would a white woman be doin’ away off here?”
He looked around. Some of the bones had been pulled away by coyotes. There was no sign of a grave. Somehow she had come to this point, died here, and remained lying there until now.
“Ought to bury her,” Sam said.
“With what? We got no shovel. Come on.
We got miles to go an’ we’ll be late for chuck. If we’re late the cook will throw it out.”
“What about the ring?”
“Leave it with her. Maybe she set store by it. And anyway, she’s got nothing else.”
They rode away. The sound of their hoofbeats died away. The wind stirred, and a little dust drifted over the whitened bones, and then lay still.
Footnote
1 Actually 26 men are said to have been killed in that room during the wild days.
North To The Rails Page 19