Ralph Compton The Cheyenne Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “Louella.”

  She looked up to see Reese appear out of the darkness.

  “Reese, thank goodness,” she cried.

  Reese swung off his horse and grabbed up his wife. His hands tangled in her nightgown as he stroked her hair and pressed his check against hers.

  “Oh, darling,” he murmured, “you shouldn’t be doing this. And it’s no good.”

  “I’m trying to save our home,” she said. “The fire.”

  “Yes, yes, but you’ve got to go inside and get dressed. Quickly. I’ll saddle your horse. Hurry.”

  He helped her to the door and opened it. She limped inside and Reese dashed off to the barn. The fire blazed across the prairie, sending columns and curtains of smoke into the air. There was a line of fire across his land that seemed endless.

  Inside the barn, he grabbed Louella’s saddle, bridle, and blanket. Her horse was whinnying in terror as fumes of smoke drifted into the structure.

  He calmed the horse down, put on its bridle, and then slapped her blanket over its back and lifted her saddle atop it. He pulled the single cinch under its belly and tightened it. Then he led the terrified horse, Rosalee, out of the barn and over to the house where he tied its reins to the hitch rail next to his horse.

  He opened the front door and called out to Louella.

  “Hurry, darling. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  ‘I’m coming,” she called back from the bowels of the house. In a few minutes, she ran to the front door, carrying a winter coat in her arms. She was breathless as she went outside.

  He helped her step into her stirrup and boosted her up into the saddle. He took her coat from her and tied it in back of her cantle with leather thongs that dangled from the saddle. Then he climbed aboard his own horse.

  They could hear the fire crackle now, and there was smoke all around them.

  “Oh, Reese,” she said. “We might lose our home.”

  “If we don’t hightail it out of here, we’ll lose more than that. Come on. Let’s ride.”

  She followed him as he galloped his horse to the south.

  The wind gusted and blew the fire closer to their house, the barn, and the corrals.

  Reese saw a line where the fire did not burn and he halted his horse and looked back.

  Cordwood stood piled next to the house, and he saw a tongue of fire lash into it. The dry wood caught fire and the stack began to tumble as the wood weakened. One of the flaming logs rolled over to the house and set the baseboards afire.

  Flames attacked the barn and raced up the outer walls and into the loft.

  He and Louella watched in shock and horror as the barn blazed like a giant torch, lighting up the night like a beacon. Then the house began to burn. Windows broke in a shattering of scorched glass. Flames shot through the roof and surrounded the outer walls.

  Louella began to weep.

  Reese leaned over and patted her on the shoulder.

  “Oh, Reese,” she wept, “our home, our beautiful home.”

  “I know, I know,” he said.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “You’re going to go on the drive with me, darling. We’ll come back. We’ll rebuild.”

  She could not stop crying as the two rode off into the night.

  Behind them, the fire raged, burning down their corrals, the well housing, their home, the barn, the bunkhouse, and the cook shack. And on it raged, beyond the house and outbuildings.

  That’s when they saw a sight that would forever be seared in their memory.

  A lame calf, with a broken leg, emerged from the darkness and tried to escape the encroaching flames. Its pitiful cries tore at their hearts as they watched the calf try to escape the onrushing flames. It could not move fast enough.

  “She must have been crippled and left behind when we branded,” Reese said.

  “Poor thing. Is there anything we can do to save her?”

  Reese shook his head.

  They had to watch as the flames caught up to the heifer and her hide caught fire. The calf screamed in terror as the fire rose and consumed her. She floundered for a few feet and then collapsed as the flames enveloped her.

  Louella cried out in anguish at the terrible sight. Her sobs increased as Reese put an arm around her.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “That poor little thing,” Louella said, and bowed her head. “How did this happen?” she cried as they rode away from the conflagration.

  “I know who did this,” Reese said.

  “What? Who?”

  “Silver Bear and his Cheyenne,” Reese said. “He did it, I’m sure.”

  “That’s terrible. What will you do?”

  “For now, nothing. But I suspect we haven’t heard the last from that redskin. He’s out to get me and he won’t quit. Until I kill him.”

  They rode on in silence, and the fires shrank from their sight except for a thin line across the horizon in their wake.

  Reese thought of Silver Bear. He should have killed him when the man had asked for some cattle. He should have shot him down along with his braves and that would have been the end of it.

  The question now was, how far would Silver Bear go to destroy him? Would he follow them south and try to steal cattle from the herd?

  He might, Reese thought. He wouldn’t put anything past that treacherous redskin.

  It was a long way to Cheyenne, and Silver Bear knew the country better than he did.

  He gritted his teeth in anger. He vowed that if he ever saw the Cheyenne again, he would kill him on sight. He wished now that he had Silver Bear’s neck in his hands. He would wring it until the man’s eyes exploded from their sockets, until he had squeezed all the breath out of him.

  The rear of the herd came into sight. He waved to whoever was riding drag and rode on, Louella right beside him on Rosalee, her bay mare.

  Finally they reached the head of the herd and saw Jimmy John riding point ahead of them.

  “What you got there, Reese?” Jimmy John called out. “Afraid of bein’ lonesome?”

  “You just tend to your job, Jimmy John,” Reese said. “I’ll take care of Louella.”

  “I don’t know if I can keep up with you, Reese,” she said. “My back is already killing me.”

  “Maybe Checkers can make a bed for you in the chuck wagon,” he said as he slowed his horse to ride left flank.

  “No, no. I don’t want any special treatment,” she said. “I’ll get used to the pain.”

  Reese wasn’t sure. His wife’s hip might keep hurting on such a long trip.

  But he was glad that she was safe. If he had not returned when he had, she might have been burned to death in that prairie fire.

  Like the crippled heifer.

  It was horrible for him to contemplate what might have happened.

  And his hatred for Silver Bear grew like a monstrous mushroom in his mind.

  While the north wind blew at his back, he watched the pale light of dawn seep onto the eastern horizon like a curtain opening up on a window.

  And the first day of October breathed down his neck as the wind whispered in his ear. Winter was not far away.

  Chapter 10

  Silver Bear watched as the fire raced across the dry prairie. His eyes gleamed in the firelight.

  That will teach the white dogs, he thought.

  The Cheyenne all watched the fire eat up the prairie grasses. Smoke billowed up into the night sky and they saw the larger blazes consume the house, barn, wagons, corrals, bunkhouse, and cook shack. They raised their voices in jubilation. Their cries filled the night over the crackling of flames.

  “The white man is gone,” Yellow Horse said to Silver Bear. “He will not come back.”

  “I will wait for the Great Spirit to tell me what the white man
will do,” Silver Bear said. “The white man is gone and the land has been eaten by fire. But he took his cattle and his horses with him.”

  The men talked among themselves in both speech and sign. The women chattered and laughed as they marveled at the flames and the destruction.

  Dawn’s egg cracked open finally and painted the sky with cream and gold.

  The flames died out at the two creeks and at other places as far as anyone there could see. The wind blew cold from the north, and there were smoldering hot spots in the prairie.

  The women smelled the remains of the horse and the calf. Their bellies rumbled and contracted with hunger. The men too could smell the cooked meat of the horse and the calf.

  Black Feather spoke of the horse. “There is still meat on the horse,” he said. “It will be good to eat.”

  “When it is cool and the smoke is gone, I will send the women out to gather the cooked meat,” Silver Bear said.

  “That is good,” Yellow Horse said, and the men grunted in agreement as they sniffed the morning air.

  The smoke hung in the sky for a long time. When the land had cooled, the women, who had carried the bulrushes wrapped in saddle blankets, went to the creek, wet their blankets, and went out to find the dead horse and the dead calf. They stepped on wet blankets or beat the smoking ground with them. Some burned their feet and danced over the hottest places, giggling and laughing when one of them got burned.

  Most of the meat on the horse had burned up, but the women nibbled on what was left and gathered up the leftover meat and placed the scraps in their blankets. The calf was mostly bone with some flesh clinging to the legs and spine. They harvested the leg bones and found meat clinging to other bones.

  They carried their spoils to the men, who chewed on the charred meat and gnawed on some of the bones, sucking out the marrow.

  Silver Bear told the women to forage through the burned buildings. “Go and see what you find,” he told them.

  To the men, he said, “We will return to our lodges and smoke the pipe. The smoke will tell us what we will do.”

  “That is good,” Yellow Horse said.

  The men returned to their lean-tos while the women returned to the pasture and ventured across it to the smoldering remains of the house and the other structures.

  In the barn, they found plowshares and metal attachments to saddles, spurs, rakes, hoes, and other remnants of farm and ranch implements. They exclaimed joyously over every find and chatted about trinkets they would make from the O- and D-rings that they discovered among the ashes.

  In the house, they found pots and pans, the metal lids from stoves that could be made into knives and arrowheads. They made several treks to the lean-tos and back with the objects they had plundered from the ruins of the ranch houses.

  The men sat around the fire and smoked. They talked.

  “Winter is coming,” Silver Bear said. “We cannot live in the mountains. We must have food.”

  “What will we do?” Black Feather asked.

  “There is nothing to hunt,” Yellow Horse said. “There are no buffalo. The antelope run to the south and all the birds have flown away. We will starve here. We will all die.”

  “There are the cattle,” Silver Bear said.

  “Far away now,” Black Feather said.

  Speckled Hawk and White Duck agreed. Their faces were taut and their expressions grim.

  “The man they call Reese is rich with cattle,” Silver Bear said. “He drives them away, but that is to the good for us.”

  “What do you mean, Silver Bear?” Yellow Horse asked.

  “There are many cattle and not many men to watch them as they all go to the south.”

  “That is true,” White Duck said. “I have seen them drive cattle before when we hunted in the south.”

  “The cattle are in a long line,” Speckled Hawk said. “There is one man in front of the cows, one on each side, and another at their tails. Men ride back and forth to keep the cattle bunched up.”

  “That is so,” Silver Bear said. “The white men cannot watch every cow. If we go after them, we can steal some of the cows away. If the line of cattle is long, there will be a good chance for us to steal some cows.”

  The men grew more excited as they talked strategy and technique.

  “We have enough of us to catch many cows,” Yellow Horse said.

  “Yes,” Red Deer said, and he signed to the Lakota and the Crow who were there.

  Whining Dog and Iron Knife both signed that they understood.

  “We can fool the white man,” Silver Bear said. “Some can ride in from one direction while others of us steal the cows from another side of the herd.”

  “It will be like the buffalo hunt,” Yellow Horse said. “Except that we will not shoot the cows. We will steal them.”

  The men around the fire all laughed.

  “Yes, that is so,” Silver Bear said. “If we steal the cows at night, we will have that dark to hide us. We can steal many cows and drive them back here. We will have food for the winter.”

  As the women returned and brought their plunder, the men prepared to leave their encampment.

  Silver Bear did not want the herd to get too far away. Already he could feel winter’s cold breath on the air.

  They were all hungry and what little meat there was from the horse and the calf would not last long. And that meat was for the women. They would be busy with the bones and the trinkets they would make from the white man’s things.

  The white men would not move fast. There were many cows they had to watch and move.

  The men rode from their camp as dusk shadowed the land and the stars began to appear in the fading blue sky.

  Hunger drove them as the coming winter warned them.

  Chapter 11

  Louella was the first to spot Tommy Chadwick once it was daylight.

  He rode all alone on the far side of the herd. He was hunched over in the saddle as if trying to hide.

  “I wondered what happened to Tommy,” she told Reese. “And there he is yonder. He was supposed to stay at the ranch to help me, didn’t you say?”

  “I did. And he was.” Reese saw the boy too and scowled. He hadn’t thought of him at all when he rode back to rescue Louella. He should have, he realized.

  Now here he was, on the drive, without a word.

  “I’ll find out why he’s here and wasn’t back home trying to help you.”

  “Go easy on him, Reese,” she said. “He’s just a kid.”

  “A kid who neglected his duties. You stay here on this flank of the herd, Lou. I want to talk to that boy.”

  She watched her husband ride through the herd, dodging cattle and horns.

  Tommy raised his head and looked at Reese. Then he shifted his gaze to Louella and turned away, as if in shame.

  The cattle moved slowly under gray streamers of high clouds, and the glare of sunlight spread across the trail in gold and pink rays. The moaning of the cattle seemed to echo the mood of the sleepy hands that kept them all in formation.

  “Tommy, what are you doing here?” Reese asked as he rode up to the young man.

  Tommy was a slender, freckle-faced youth with brown eyes and hair, a wrinkle of a nose, and thin lips. Peach fuzz grew on his chin like spun cotton candy. His boots were scuffed and unshined, his shirt was rumpled, and his trousers hung on his frame like an afterthought of clothing.

  “I didn’t know where else to go,” Tommy said, a slight quaver in his voice.

  “You were supposed to look after my wife while I was gone.”

  “I know, but I heard this calf a-wailin’ out in the pasture and I rode out to see what was wrong with it. Then I saw the fire a-comin’ and I lit out so’s I wouldn’t get burned. I’m sorry. But I didn’t know where to go, except after the herd. That fire was movin’ so fast
, and I like to have got caught up in it.”

  “Did you see the calf?”

  “Nope, never did see it. Like I said, I just saw a whole lot of fire comin’ at me like crazy and I lit out.”

  “You see my wife over there on the other side of the herd, don’t you?”

  “I seen her, sir, yes.”

  “She barely got out of there alive. And you weren’t there.”

  “No, sir, I lit out when I saw that fire a-comin’ acrost the prairie. I didn’t think it would get to the house.”

  “Well, it did. You ought to get a whippin’ for running off like you did.”

  “Heck, I didn’t know what else to do. The fire come on real fast and I just barely got away from it.”

  “Well, you’re here now, and you’ll work like the rest of us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You stay where you are and chase back any strays.”

  “I can do that, sir.”

  “See that you do,” Reese said.

  He rode back, parting the herd with his horse. Louella looked relieved when he joined her on the flank.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “He got caught in the fire. He heard that calf we saw and rode out to find it. He never did.”

  “Poor boy. He must have been scared out of his wits.”

  “He forgot his responsibility, Lou. That was to see after you.”

  “Don’t be too harsh, Reese. I’m sure Tommy feels sorry for running away.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure he does. I just kick myself for ever taking him in.”

  “Kindhearted, Reese. That’s what you are. And you did right to give the boy a home.”

  Tommy was an orphan who had run away from an orphanage in Denver. He wound up in Bismarck, where Reese found him begging on the street. He felt sorry for the boy and took him out to the ranch. To him, Tommy was like a stray dog, homeless and hungry, and he had taken pity on him.

  The herd moved slowly that first day, and some of the cattle were restless and tried to turn back toward their home. The drovers had their hands full and had to change horses more than once as they chased cows back into the herd.