“Easy for you to say. You didn’t fall off your horse.” He saw me looking at his stump. “Hand me my reins.”
“I’m going to get Papa.”
He crammed his hat back on his head and put his back against the tree and got his legs under him. He stood, putting his hand against the trunk to steady himself. “Don’t make me have to knock some sense into you.”
“You’re in no shape to ride.”
“I was riding when I fell off.”
“You’re going to kill yourself. At the least, I’ll go with you back to camp. Rest up this afternoon and go at it again tomorrow, if you’re up to it.”
He lunged forward and snatched the reins out of my hand. “I’ll quit when everyone else does.”
I didn’t think he could get on his horse, but he did. And he did look better than he had moments before.
“All I needed was some water. Got busy and forgot to drink enough.”
I caught my horse and mounted, keeping a close eye on him. “You still look like death warmed over.”
“You don’t look any better. What’s your excuse?”
“Killing yourself won’t prove anything.”
“To hell it wouldn’t.”
“Have it your way.”
“Don’t you tell Papa. Promise?”
“I won’t tell him, but if I find you lying on the ground again I’m going to leave you there.”
He started his horse through the brush in the direction of the drive, hunkered over his saddle swells a little and his hat brim bobbing as if he was having a hard time holding his chin up.
I watched him go and wished there was something that I could do to help him. Every day I watched him fight to learn how to do things with one arm—things boys with two good arms took for granted. All three of us, Gunn, Joseph, and I, were learning new skills when it came to handling cattle from horseback, but Gunn was working with one arm at a job that sometimes made you wish you had three. Gunn didn’t like to think there was anything he couldn’t do, and I knew he was afraid that Papa would leave him behind when we went north.
“Don’t you tell Papa,” he called out one more time.
Chapter Seventeen
Spring 1867, Salt Creek Crossing
on the Red River, Texas, to Indian Territory
“Sceloporus undulatus, I think.”
Gunn pulled his horse up and looked down at the little reptile I was pointing out, making a fair attempt at acting like he was interested. “Why don’t you speak English?”
“Eastern fence lizard.”
“All that smart talk make you feel good?”
“Latin is the language of science.”
We had fallen back a hundred yards or so from the tail end of the herd, but the dust was still so thick you could barely see. Or breathe. Gunn had tied a piece of rag around his neck and he pulled it up over his nose until only his dark eyes showed beneath his hat. “No science to riding drag. No skill at all, or we wouldn’t be back here. Just eating dust.”
“Maybe I don’t always intend to be riding drag.”
“Me neither. I’m going to earn my way up to riding flank or I’m going to knock off one of those vaqueros and take his place.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“Didn’t suppose it was.”
I coughed and squinted through the dust at the herd strung out in a long line before me, and then looked back across the river we had recently crossed. “We’ve barely been in Texas long enough to build a fire, and now Papa’s taking us somewhere else.”
“Papa’s a driver and he ain’t much for sitting still.” Gunn hacked some phlegm up from his throat and leaned over and spat on the lizard. “We better get to driving ourselves. If we don’t keep these drags moving Papa ain’t ever going to make his next fortune.”
“The longer we live in Texas, the worse you talk.”
“Well, I’ll keep talking like I like to talk, and you keep your nose in that grammar primer you’re always holding over my head. You tell me if these old longhorns answer either one of us.”
I looked to the herd strung out more than a mile in front of us, with Old Speck leading them with a cowbell clanging from his neck that Papa had tied there—2,223 bellowing longhorn steers, four years old and up, with their giant horns swinging with every stride, and every one of them with our $D brand six inches tall burned into their left rib cage. It might seem strange that I remember their number, but Papa was a stickler for an accurate count.
The world has never seen the likes of a Texas longhorn, before or since. More hoof and bone and horn and pure stubbornness than any other animal known to mankind, and a testament to the controversial theories those Englishmen, Darwin and Spencer, got everyone in such an uproar about. Descended from the original Spanish cattle brought to the New World, longhorns were a result of three hundred years of natural selection and survival of the fittest. What they couldn’t outrun they outfought. Too tough and stringy to make a decent steak, they could make do with less and walk farther than anything short of a buffalo.
I let Gunn ride off before me, his thin legs pounding the sides of his tired horse, and his empty shirtsleeve pinned to his chest. He was still too skinny and his sun-bronzed cheeks too hollow, but he looked as hard as a piece of bull hide and wiry strong. Who was it that said Texas will either cure you or kill you?
Somebody shouted, and I looked to the edge of the herd and saw Joseph waving at us. He was helping our horse wrangler bring along our remuda, which was what the vaqueros called our herd of extra saddle horses. Each one of us had six horses in our string, so that we could rotate to fresh mounts as needed.
Joseph had taken to the vaquero life like a duck to water. Our Mexican teachers were wizards with those long braided rawhide riatas that they used to rope cattle, and Joseph, under their tutelage, packed his riata around every waking hour, roping anything and everything that had the misfortune to cross his path. From the chickens to my own feet, everything was fair game for him to practice with his favorite toy.
And as a horseman, we all knew from the first time he climbed up on that Kiowa roan that he was going to be one. He made everything he did from the saddle look easy.
I adjusted my own rope, hung from my saddle horn and resting coiled atop my right thigh. It was a waste for me to carry the thing, and I don’t know why I did, unless it was because the loose tail of it was handy to wave around and keep the stragglers at the tail end of the herd, the drag, moving. It sure wasn’t because of my skill with it. I was more apt to tangle myself up in it than I was to rope anything.
Ahead of the remuda was our wagon, loaded with our bedrolls and supplies. Back in the early days, nobody had chuck wagons like you hear talk of. Some give Old John Blocker or Charlie Goodnight credit for being the first one to nail a grub box on the back of a wagon and take it north with a trail herd, but I don’t know. All I know is that ours was simply a plain wagon. We were pretty poorly equipped, and looked nothing like most folks picture cowboys. Every one of us, except for Papa, was dressed like Mexican vaqueros with broad-brimmed, low-crowned sombreros, and our high-topped riding boots cobbled from ill-tanned leather by our ranch bootmaker. Cloth was so scarce that some of the men wore buckskin shirts. If a man had a pair of spurs, he traded for them or he braided his own rawhide quirt.
But those were the old days, before everyone and their brother decided they wanted to get in on the cattle business. The tricks of the trade were still being worked out.
The old Texas hands down in the brush country of South Texas didn’t call gathering cattle a roundup. It was a “cow hunt.” Men from the area would meet at a certain agreed-upon spot, bringing as many good cow horses as they could and their supplies loaded on a packhorse. They would drive the longhorns out of the brush where they could, sometimes baying them with packs of dogs, or moonlighting them on an open prairie in the middle of the mesquite and run them down and rope them. A large brush corral might be built to hold the gather while the men sear
ched for more. As I’ve said before, a mossyhorn steer that had spent his life in the wild was a handful. Many a man and horse were gored or crippled racing through the thorny thickets in hot pursuit. You’ve never done anything until you’ve roped a 1,200-pound wild steer with horns six feet wide from the back of an 850-pound Texas pony. I don’t know who was more outlaw, those longhorns or the men who went after them.
While we weren’t in South Texas, we had gathered our trail herd in a similar way. Every day, Papa and José led the hands out, and together, we drove every head we could find back toward the ranch. Then we branded everything out in the open with no corrals, and men roping and throwing the cattle and others branding them and castrating the young bulls. By the time we were ready to drive north, in addition to the newly made steers big enough for market, Papa had his brand on some two thousand head of mixed stock, cows, calves, etc. All it took in those days for a man to become a rancher was a good roping arm and a string of horses. Stupid, stubborn grit and determination didn’t hurt your chances, either.
We had crossed the Red River that day a little after noon, and only made five more miles before we bedded the herd and went into evening camp. Papa trusted to José, his segundo, and understood that the herd couldn’t be pushed too hard. The sign of a good drover was to bring his herd to market in better flesh than when they left home. Every pound a steer lost was taking money out of your pocket. But none of us knew if anyone up in Kansas would buy our beef. The whole thing was a gamble.
José had assigned Gunn and me the first guard. The men were paired, and each pair stood roughly a two-hour watch on the herd, with the last guard starting the cattle grazing along the trail at daylight. The first guard was usually reserved for more senior men so that they didn’t have to be woken in the middle of their sleep to stand their turn. I think Papa gave that guard to us because it was safer. Our herd was not yet trail broke, and apt to spook and run at the slightest provocation. But usually, if you could get them bedded calmly, any mischief was apt to happen after they had a chance to rest and chew their cud.
It was dark by the time I made my last slow ride around the bedded herd under the stars, and my relief rode out to take my place. I was usually too tired to do anything but wolf down my supper and fall in my bedroll, but we had company that night. A voice hailed our campfire from the dark, and after we invited him to come on in, a tall young man, maybe in his early twenties, on a hard-ridden horse trotted up and dismounted. He said something in Spanish to our cook that made him laugh, and then took the plate of food offered him and settled down on the wagon tongue across from Papa. Despite his friendly banter and Papa’s offer to camp with us for the night, he seemed nervous and didn’t unsaddle his horse.
I took the plate of beans and corn tortillas the cook handed me and sat on the ground close enough to Papa that I could hear what was being said.
“You look to have ridden far,” Papa said to our guest.
“Not so far as that,” the young man said. “But I aim to get out of this country as fast as I can and back down to Bee County where we’ve already got the Indians whipped.”
“Indians?” Papa asked.
“The herd I was with ran on to them yesterday.”
“Herd?”
“You didn’t think you were the only one on the trail, did you?”
“We saw dust ahead of us yesterday,” Papa answered between spoonfuls shoved from his plate. He was always businesslike about getting his meal finished and not much to talk during it. “Figured as much.”
Our visitor was tackling his food even faster than Papa, as if he hadn’t eaten in a long while, or he was in an awful big hurry to finish. He didn’t bother with manners, and talked around the food stuffed in his cheek. “That’s O. W. Wheeler’s herd up ahead of you, and there’s another bunch trailing east of us and two days ahead.”
Papa looked put out. Much of his plan centered on being the first to reach the new market on the railhead. Competition was bound to lower the price of beef.
“That promoter up in Kansas has sent flyers all over Texas,” the man said. “If you ask me, nobody knows a thing about this Abilene. Could be a bunch of hot air. This is the second time I’ve headed north with a herd, and neither time has worked out like it was supposed to.”
“Second time?” Papa asked absentmindedly.
“Last fall I hired out with a crew to drive to Sedalia, Missouri. We were barely across the Neosho River when a bunch of farmers and their sheriff held us up with shotguns and turned us back. Those folks up there are dead set on keeping Texas cattle out of Missouri. Shot two of our lead steers and stampeded the rest. Arrested our trail boss and wouldn’t turn him loose without we paid a fine. Ended up we scraped together seven dollars between us, and those squareheads took that and half our saddle horses to let him out of jail.”
Papa grimaced. “I was thinking that if this Abilene place didn’t turn out like it is supposed to be, we might cut to the east and drive to Missouri.”
“They’ve got the whole damned state quarantined. Scared of Texas Fever. Who ever heard of that?”
“Texas Fever?”
“They say our cattle make theirs sick and die. Every steer in our herd was as healthy as can be. It’s a racket, if you ask me. Damned Yankees got it out for boys in gray.”
“Did you try this Abilene then, or did you turn back?”
“Weren’t no Abilene last year. Not that we knew about.” The man gestured with his empty plate and waited until the cook refilled it before going on. “Once we had our boss out of the calaboose, we heard a rumor that the Yankee soldiers might buy some beef at Fort Scott. A day south of there, we got held up again. That bunch weren’t farmers. Regular herd cutters and holdup types. Border trash wanting us to pay a toll to go through their country. They tied one of our men to a tree and whipped him half to death with a switch. Texas Fever must not have been any concern of theirs, for they stole the whole herd. Us boys burned enough powder at ’em to keep them off of us, and rode south as soon as we could get our boss loose from that tree.”
“You said you’ve been north two times,” Papa said.
“This spring was to be my second trip. Slow learner, I guess, or I’m under some kind of curse. Old man Wheeler said we would be fine if we stayed west of those farmers and Jayhawkers. Has him one of those Joseph McCoy flyers he got off of some bottle peddler down in the brush, saying that there were stock pens and cattle buyers gonna be waiting on the railroad this spring and summer. All that may be, but the Indians don’t give a hoot and a holler about no Kansas railroads.”
“Indians?” Papa stood up and dusted off his pants.
“There’s a big camp of them about seven miles north of you. They come up to us friendly-like, and we fed a few of them. But that wasn’t enough. Before long they were making like they were mad and wanting more. Like to have been a big fight in our camp, but they had us outnumbered five to one and the boys kept their shooters in their holsters.”
“And what became of your herd?”
“Oh, they stampeded us good. Rode through the herd and scattered them to hell and back. By the time we could gather them and move on, we were short fifty head. I guess those heathens will eat good this winter. Especially if you’re bound and determined to drive past them.”
“Any of your men hurt?”
“Nothing but hurt feelings.” The man gave Papa a funny look. “I guess you’re asking because you’re wondering why I’m here.”
“I am.”
“Like I said, I’m done with this cattle drive business.” He scrubbed his plate out with a handful of sand and pitched it in the wash barrel. “They want Texas cattle, let ’em build a railroad down here, and I’ll be the first to help load their cars.”
Papa followed the man to his horse. “You’re welcome to pitch your blankets with us.”
“No, I don’t believe I will. Thanks for the grub.”
“Safe traveling.”
The man swung up on his horse
at the edge of the firelight. “You boys be careful and sleep light. Those Kiowa were in a mood to lift hair.”
“Kiowa, you say?” Papa’s voice went hard.
“Yes, a mixed bunch of Kiowa and Comanche. Led by a tall young buck and an older one. That older one is the meanest son of a bitch in buckskins you ever saw. Little wrinkled-up fellow. Man with us that spoke a little of their jabber said they called him Lone Wolf. You meet him, you’ll know who I’m talking about. Rides a yellow horse and wears two revolvers in his belt and a gold locket hanging from one of his braids.”
“Gold locket?” Papa’s hand grabbed ahold of the man’s bridle.
“You know, the kind a woman wears. God bless the poor girl who he took that from.”
“What did that locket look like? Was it shaped like a teardrop with a little ruby in the center?” Papa held on to the bridle, even though it was obvious the man was anxious to leave.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get that close of a look, and I had other worries, besides.”
Papa seemed lost in his own thoughts.
“Mister, you let go of my bridle. I don’t want any trouble with you, but I’m headed back to Texas.”
Papa let go, and that man rode off into the night, the sound of his horse’s hooves plain for only a bit as he headed toward the Salt Creek Crossing.
José went over to Papa. “We’d best cut to the east, patrón. See if we can slip past that Indian camp.”
“Did you hear what that man said?” Papa’s voice had a quaver to it.
“Do you want to fight Indians or do you want to get your cows to market?” José started to say something else, but hesitated. “We are only ten men, and there is no way we can fight Indians and handle this herd at the same time.”
“We’ll leave a few good men here with the herd, and the rest of us will go after those Kiowa.”
“It won’t work. You will lose your herd, and there are your niños to think about.”
“Did you hear him? What that filthy Kiowa was wearing?”
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