The Way Of The West

by Elmer Kelton

  Overstreet clamped his teeth together and choked off an oath. “Let them go. If we caught them, we’d have to waste two more men on guard duty. Get the men up and let’s move out.”

  He drove his right fist into the palm of his left hand. What else could he expect from the men Major Scanling had given him?

  So the troop moved on, riding from the time the peach color broke in the east until the last red had faded from the western sky. Every time they passed a settlement or ran into a brown-skinned settler, Overstreet sent Elijah Vasquez to inquire in Spanish about the Shaffer Ranch. For three days the answer was only a shrug of the shoulders.

  Then one day they came upon a Mexican herding a small band of sheep. Vasquez turned away from the man, his weary face split by a gleaming smile.

  “He say it is to the south, not far from the Rio Pecos. He say Shaffer and his herd have pass this way not many days ago.”

  Overstreet saluted the herder and headed south, his men behind him. The herder never gave the soldiers more than a passive look, such as he might have given a freight outfit with a string of mules or a line of ox-drawn carretas. War was an old, old thing to these people.

  The troopers quartered east. Watchfully they crossed canon after canon, ravine after ravine that snaked out in search of the alkaline flow of the Pecos. At last the men drew rein and looked out across the turbulent brown water that etched its way between the mountains and the dreaded Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains.

  There had been considerable Indian signs, so the detail sent its outriders far to the flanks, and Overstreet allowed no hunting for fresh meat.

  Presently Wheeler came riding back in. “Settlement ahead, sir. Trading post seems to be all there is to it. Looks more like an Indian camp than anything else to me.”

  Overstreet climbed upon a low point and unfolded the spyglass. No sign of Yankee troops. There was only one long, L-shaped adobe building, with a small storehouse behind it. Out to one side was a brush corral with a number of Indian ponies in it. Scattered all about it was the litter and filth of years of careless camping.

  More than once along the border Overstreet had gotten the sudden sense of dread that crept over him now. Frowning, he folded the glass and rejoined the command. “Vasquez, you and I will go in alone. The rest of you men will stay out of sight. If you have trouble, come on the run. If you don’t, come in ten minutes.”

  As an afterthought he handed Wheeler the spyglass. Then the two men in dusty torn gray rode into the settlement. A wariness kept stirring in Overstreet. He could see it in Vasquez’s face, too. Vasquez had nerves like the steel in the long-bladed knife he wore in his belt and that he had plunged hilt-deep into the shoulder of another trooper at Albuquerque because that trooper had molested a girl whose skin was brown like that of Vasquez.

  A dark, portly man stepped out of a middle door and stood hesitantly in front of the rude adobe building. Hands shoved into the waistband of incredibly dirty trousers, he studied the men in gray. Then he looked at their horses. Overstreet knew the man would give his eyeteeth for the two mounts.

  “Ask him first if there’ve been any Yankees around here yet,” the officer said to Vasquez. The soldier spoke in quick, fluid Spanish. The trader’s reply came back in chopped Spanish, accentuated with hand signals and a quick shaking of the head.

  Vasquez turned to the lieutenant. “He say no, no Yankees. He say the men in gray are always his friends. Also he ask if we are alone.”

  Overstreet realized suddenly that something in the man’s face wasn’t Mexican at all. The eyes were blue. And now that he looked closer, he could see the sun strike a reddish tinge to the matted beard and the hair that showed under the broad-brimmed sombrero. The discovery set needles pricking his skin.

  He became aware of almost a dozen dark men stepping stealthily out of doors all along the lengthy adobe building. A few were Mexican, but most were Indians. They were armed, and they formed a wide, tight circle around the two soldiers. Over-street fought back a panicky urge to draw his gun. It would never clear the holster.

  One of the Indians was wearing a soldier’s gray coat with a blue patch on the right elbow. Short hair rose on Overstreet’s neck. Brinkley’s coat! The two deserters had not gotten far.

  The trader switched to English. “Ain’t no cause for alarm, Lieutenant. All of us here are good friends of the South.”

  As he talked, his mouth broken in a mirthless, yellow-toothed smile, the trader was walking toward the two soldiers. Suddenly he reached out and caught the reins of both horses, right before the bits.

  Vasquez whipped out an oath and grabbed for the knife at his belt.

  “Hold it, Vasquez!” Overstreet barked. He could see the yawning chasm of death in a dozen gun muzzles.

  Still talking, now triumphant, the trader said: “If I was you, I’d step down easy. Was I to give the signal, my boys’d cut you in two. They like to see the blood run.”

  Anger and fear mixed in the blood that pounded through Overstreet’s veins. Throat dry, he started to obey. Just as his right leg swung over his horse’s rump, he saw sudden excitement hit the Mexicans and Indians like a cannonball. The trader’s smile vanished. He let go of the horses.

  The Rebel soldiers had ridden in quietly and ringed the post. All of them had guns in their hands. A quick murmur rippled through the motley trading-post bunch as they weighed the proposition, whether to drop their guns or stand their ground. At last one wrinkled old Indian lowered the ancient muzzle-loading pistol he held, and the others followed suit.

  Relief washed through Overstreet as his men rode in. The scare had left him momentarily weak. The black-hearted Wheeler was in command, sitting his horse with all the pride and arrogance of a Yankee general. He saluted the lieutenant, then motioned for the Mexicans and Indians to line up.

  Overstreet turned to Vasquez, who seemed to have taken a quick grip on his nerves. “Call everybody out of the building into the yard. Tell them any man who hesitates or runs will get a bullet through him.”

  Three more Indian bucks, a couple of slatternly squaws, and a disheveled Mexican woman came out of the building and joined the line.

  “All right, men,” the lieutenant said with vengeance in his voice, “search every room. If anything goes wrong, don’t hesitate to shoot.”

  It was then that Sammy McGuffin pulled his horse up beside the Indian wearing the gray coat.

  “Look,” he shouted, pointing his finger. “He’s got Brinkley’s coat on.”

  Evidently thinking he was being pointed out for death, the Indian desperately lunged at Sammy’s horse. He grabbed the carbine from the boy’s hand. It exploded, and the kid jerked, crying out in pain. Dalton Corbell shot the Indian.

  Tobe Wheeler grabbed the boy and held him in the saddle until two troopers jumped down to ease the whimpering lad to the ground. The wound was a raw, gaping hole well inside the left shoulder.

  Watching the wound being bandaged, Overstreet asked Wheeler: “Think he can ride?”

  Wheeler nodded. “He’ll have to, I reckon. A couple of them redskins slipped away during the excitement. Even afoot, it ain’t going to take them all week to find help.”

  Searching the post, the soldiers found only a couple of cases of old muzzle-loading guns, a little gunpowder, a roomful of Indian trade goods, mostly rotten whisky, and a nose-pinching stack of buffalo robes.

  Overstreet nodded toward the hides. “There’s no buffalo here, Wheeler. I’d bet these were traded from the plains tribes across in Texas.”

  The thick-bodied soldier drawled: “If you was to ask me, sir, I’d say this is what they call a Comanchero post. A dirty bunch of Indian traders that’ll swap guns, whisky, captured women and children, or anything else, long’s there’s a profit in it. It’d suit me fine to cut the throats of the whole bunch before we leave here.”

  The lieutenant caught a short, banty rooster of a trooper named Duffy gulping a long swig of the trader’s whisky. The little man choked, and tears welled
up into his eyes. “Terrible stuff, sir,” he wheezed, the whisky still searing his throat. “Should be against the law, the making of it. Will you have a drink with me?”

  Overstreet shook his head. “No. And if I catch you taking another drink of it, I’ll make you walk till your drunken brain explodes. Dump that stuff out, all of it.”

  The soldiers piled up all the guns, powder, and trade goods. Overstreet told them to take out what they could use.

  “Then set fire to the rest of it.”

  The fat trader’s mouth dropped open. His hands began gesturing violently. “For God’s sake, Lieutenant, you wouldn’t go and leave us here unarmed, would you? We got enemies.”

  Overstreet gritted: “From the looks of your red-skinned cronies here, I’d say you ought to have friends enough to protect you.” He frowned at the trader then, and an idea came to him. “What’s your name?”

  The red-edged eyes smoldered. “Howden Tate Bowden. What difference does that make to you?”

  Overstreet reached forward and grabbed the man’s dirty collar. “Do you know where the Walton Shaffer Ranch is?”

  The fat man nodded. “I ought to. What few troubles I had, that’s where they come from.”

  Overstreet snapped: “Then get your saddle. You’re riding with us.”

  The trader started to argue, but Wheeler poked him in the belly with the muzzle of a carbine. Bowden turned to obey.

  As he saddled a fat pony in the corral, he flicked his hate-filled eyes at Overstreet. “I promise you this . . . you won’t get far . . . my friends’ll be on your trail before the dust settles . . . your scalps will be drying on a pole by this time tomorrow.”

  Overstreet angrily grabbed the man by the grimy collar again, and shoved him roughly back against his horse. “If you think you’re going to lead us into an ambush, you’d better forget it. You’d die with us, because we’ll slit your throat like we’d butcher a beef. Remember that. Now let’s go.”

  They put the wounded boy into his saddle, and one trooper rode beside him to give him support. The detail moved out. Three soldiers rode ahead, pushing all the Indian ponies before them. Overstreet turned back once to look at the dark smoke that curled upward into the hazy sky. He got a grim satisfaction from the dismay on Bowden’s greasy face.

  He knew the trading post Indians wouldn’t follow afoot, and they certainly wouldn’t go to the Yankees. But they might bring another kind of help—dark-skinned savages with paint-smeared faces, muskets and short bows, lances and scalping knives. The thought made Overstreet spur harder.

  Far into the night they rode, then slept in a fireless camp with no warm rations. All night Sammy McGuffin whimpered in painful half sleep. Before daybreak the troop was up and moving again, watching the back trail for any sign of pursuit.

  It was a long ride, a hard ride. Sitting wearily in the saddle, Over-street let his mind wander back through the years to other rides he had made. They had been long rides, too, and he had made them stirrup-to-stirrup with his father. The distance hadn’t mattered much to him as a boy, for always there had been something new to see. And always there had been that commanding fire in old Jobe Overstreet’s eyes.

  Jobe Overstreet had been a circuit rider, with a black coat over his shoulders and the book in his pocket, and he had ridden the length and breadth of the frontier to bring the word to scattered settlers who hadn’t seen a church in years. It had been a hard life, one that would have left a weakling of a boy by the wayside. But it had been worth all of it to thrill to that grand fever in his father’s voice as he would stand above the gathered crowd in a clearing or on a hillside or along a creek bank.

  But gradually, somehow, there came a change. Young Miles Overstreet found other activities more to his interest. He made fewer and fewer of those long rides beside old Jobe. That impassioned voice no longer sent a thrill tingling down his spine, and doubts began to crowd out the faith that had dwelt so long with him.

  He would never forget that day he rode up to the little log structure that passed for a home and told his father that he had joined the Texas Rangers. It had been painful to watch the bitter disappointment etch itself into his father’s lean, brown face.

  “Don’t be too soon making up your mind, son,” Jobe had said with patience.

  Not until then had Miles noticed how completely gray his father had become.

  “‘Tis a sad thing to see a man turn away from the Book and take up the gun. The gun brings misery and death to the body. But the book, boy, the book is food and drink and life for the soul.”

  But Miles had been young and bold and high of heart, and he had ridden away. The quick glance he took over his shoulder was the last look he had ever gotten at his father. That look was burned into his mind, his father standing like a great oak, his broad shoulders sagging a little, his head bowed in prayer.

  Soon afterward Jobe Overstreet had gone down toward the coast to give comfort to the dying in a yellow fever epidemic. But the fever fastened itself upon him. And as the epidemic itself died away, Jobe Overstreet died, too.

  The news had struck Miles like a thunderbolt. That a man who had spent his life serving the Lord should have to die in suffering when he had been on a mission of mercy. . . . Miles Overstreet’s faith had ebbed away, and it had never returned.

  III

  “The Girl from Albuquerque”

  In mid-afternoon he began to notice that Bowden was leading them slightly to the east again. Worry began pulling at him, and he sent outriders a little farther away to watch for signs that anything was wrong.

  It wasn’t long in coming. Vasquez spurred in, waving his hat excitedly. “Indian camp, sir,” he shouted breathlessly. “About a mile ahead. Forty men, maybe fifty. This man”—he motioned toward Bowden—“he try to make us ride right into them.”

  Fury pulled Overstreet around in the saddle to face the trader. “You misled us, Bowden. You remember what I told you?”

  The pudgy cheeks drained of color, and the blood-rimmed blue eyes widened. Suddenly Bowden spurred the pony and clattered down the rocky slope, trying recklessly to make the Indian camp. Half a dozen troopers raised their rifles.

  “Don’t shoot!” Overstreet yelled. “You’ll have the whole camp on us.”

  He spurred after Bowden. The fat Indian pony wasn’t much match for a well-bred cavalry mount, even though the bigger horse was tired from day upon day of riding. Overstreet reached his long arm around the trader’s neck and pulled him out of the saddle. Then he dropped him and watched him roll and thrash among the sharp rocks. He swung down and jerked the trader onto his feet, drove a fist into the wide mouth, and sent Bowden rolling again.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Vasquez catch the trader’s horse and start bringing it back.

  Overstreet stood with fists doubled and watched blood trickle down the fat chin. “I meant what I told you back at the post, Bowden. You’re going to lead us to Shaffer’s. I’ll tie a rope around your neck and drag you through the rocks if I’ve got to. But you’ll lead us, and lead us right.”

  No words passed from Bowden’s bruised lips, but his blackening eyes told of the hate that seethed in him. Stiffly he mounted the pony and headed out again, a little west of south.

  They had to make another dry cold camp. Lying rolled up in his dirty blanket, sleepless, Overstreet let his thoughts wander again. They dwelt mostly upon the girl in Albuquerque. There was pleasure in remembering her dark eyes, the beauty of her face. In his imagination even the harshness was gone from her words, the only words she had spoken to him. Strange how it was that sometimes even the thought of a woman could bring comfort to the worry-crowded mind of a man.

  They came in sight of the Shaffer place the next morning. The ranch headquarters had been built along a creek that evidently ran at some times of the year and held water in deep holes the rest of the time. In a small, irrigated patch stood traces of last year’s corn crop. Last year had been a dry one in New Mexico, poor for forage and poorer fo
r crops, unless they had had some irrigation.

  All the buildings were of the inevitable adobe, set close together as in a fort, with open space all around and a stout cedar picket fence on all sides to slow up any attack. The main building was in a hollow square, with a Mexican patio in the middle. All rooms evidently opened into the patio, for there were only windows along the outer walls. Out back was a cedar thicket. Nearby, but outside the fence, were the small adobe outbuildings and pole corrals.

  Overstreet noted with satisfaction that there were only three or four horses around. Scattered up and down the creek were cattle grazing upon the short green grass that had begun to rise.

  “No sign of Yankees, Wheeler,” he said.

  At his signal, the men moved into double file and struck up a trot. At the rear was Vasquez, acting as guard for Bowden.

  “Straighten up in those saddles, men,” Overstreet ordered. “At least we can look like soldiers.”

  Wheeler spurred to the front and opened the gate that led through the tall picket fence.

  Three men stepped out of the archway that led into the patio. They stood waiting, regarding the soldiers in quiet hostility. Two were Mexicans. Warily Overstreet watched the rifle one of them held in his hands. The third man stepped forward into the yard with the dignity of a soldier proud of his service. He was not a big man, but Overstreet got the idea he was as sturdy as an oak.

  He wore an old deerskin shirt and plain black trousers. Over-street noted that the man’s right arm hung stiffly at his side.

  The stiff-armed one spoke quietly, and the Mexican reluctantly laid down the rifle. The lieutenant raised his right hand to salute. The man at the archway raised his left in the sign language signal for peace.

  “Mister Shaffer?” Overstreet asked. The ranchman nodded his gray head, his sharp eyes never leaving the officer’s face. “Lieutenant Miles Overstreet, sir, presenting his compliments.”