The Tenderfoot Trail

by Ralph Compton

  The girl had unbuttoned the top of her dress, and her head was back, her eyes closed as she dabbed a wet cloth against her throat, water trickling between the generous swell of her white breasts.

  Garrett’s breath caught in his chest as he stopped and watched Jenny for a few moments; then, feeling oddly guilty, he coughed to make his presence known.

  “Luke, I didn’t know you were there,” the girl said, smiling. She opened up the cloth and rubbed the back of her slender neck, dampening the small curls that hung there. “It’s so hot.”

  Garrett nodded. “That’s why I miss the mountains already. They’re a sight cooler than down here on the flat.”

  “Is that where your ranch is, in the mountains?”

  “They’re close by, the Rockies, the Judiths and the Big Snowy. Zeb and me, we ride some steep trails, time to time. Can’t do that with a center-fire rig, you know. That’s how come when we’re up in the high rim country, we always double-cinch our saddles.” Suddenly Garrett was embarrassed. “Sorry, Jenny. That’s just dumb cowboy talk. I should be talking pretties to a gal like you.”

  “Luke, do you know any pretties?”

  Garrett shook his head and grinned. “Now when I study on it, nary a one.”

  Jenny smiled. “Then telling me about your ranch is pretty enough. Can you describe it to me?”

  “Not much to describe. A log cabin shaded by wild oaks. Tall cottonwoods by a stream that flows fast and cool when she doesn’t run dry. A barn, a pole corral for the horses and a smokehouse. But it’s the country I love, wild and magnificent country that maybe I don’t have the words to describe. Jenny, the mountains are so high they touch the sky and the cool, clean air smells of pine and sage and the silence of morning lies on the land like a blessing.” Garrett grinned. “I reckon it’s about as close to heaven as I’m ever likely to get.”

  Jenny stepped closer to Garrett, the fingertips of her small hand on his chest. “I’d love to see it, Luke. Visit your ranch and see the mountains touch the sky and listen to the silent mornings.”

  “I don’t want you to visit, Jenny. I want you to live there, as my wife. They say cowboys have too much tumbleweed in their blood to settle down, but not me. I want you by my side, always.”

  A sadness shaded the girl’s eyes as she shook her head. “Luke, you don’t know anything about me, what I am, what I’ve been. I could never make you a wife.”

  “I love you, Jenny,” Garrett said. “Nothing else but that matters.”

  “Maybe once, a few years ago, it would have worked . . . but not now.”

  “Why not? Is it because you want to marry a man you’ve never even met?”

  “That’s not the reason,” Jenny said quickly, her eyes misting. “I have a past, Luke. Maybe too much past for you to overlook, maybe too much past for you to ever let go.”

  “Try me, Jenny. Let me make that decision.”

  The girl nodded. “I will. Sometime. But not now and not here.”

  Garrett opened his mouth to speak again, but Zeb Ready’s shout from the hill stopped him.

  “Luke, Injuns coming! An’ man-oh-man, there’s a whole passel of ’em!”

  A bullet ricocheted off the iron rim of a wagon wheel as Garrett ran to his rifle. He levered a round into the chamber, then turned and yelled at Annie, “Get back! Farther into the arroyo!”

  He had no time to watch if the woman had done as he’d ordered because the Indians had shaken out into a line and were riding fast toward the mouth of the canyon.

  Above him on the crest of the hill, Ready’s Henry hammered a shot, then another. One of the warriors threw up his hands and toppled backward off his pony. But the rest kept coming.

  Garrett drew a bead on an Indian with red and black streaks of paint across his nose and cheeks. He held his breath and fired. The man jerked as the bullet hit; then he bent over the withers of his horse before slowly sliding to the ground.

  Ready was shooting steadily and with deadly accuracy. Another Indian went down, then another. Garrett fired, fired again, and missed both times. But the charge had been broken.

  Badly burned by the unexpected deadliness of the white men’s fire, the warriors turned and streamed away to the south and were soon lost behind a swirling cloud of dust.

  “Crows!” Ready yelled from the hill, feeding shells into his rifle. “And they’ll be back, madder’n all hell!”

  Suddenly Annie Spencer was at Garrett’s side. “I told you to get farther into the arroyo,” he snapped, tension riding him.

  The woman ignored the rebuke. “Ready says they’re Crows,” she said. “If they are, they’re being led by Weasel and he won’t quit until we’re all dead.”

  A small anger flaring in him, Garrett said, “I thought you said he only wanted to kill Charlie Cobb.”

  Annie’s smile was tight. “Grow up, cowboy. We have cattle and horses here, but what Weasel wants most of all is women. He and his young warriors have been out for months without their females. I’d say they figure they’ll soon be having themselves a time.”

  “Best you get the rest of the gals out of sight,” Garrett said. “Though if they want women as badly as you say, they won’t be shooting in your direction.”

  “Maybe so, but don’t count on it, cowboy,” Annie said.

  Chapter 10

  After the woman stepped away, Luke Garrett glanced out across the flat, where the cloud of dust was slowly drifting back to the ground. Four Indians were sprawled on the grass, but as he watched one of them rose to his hands and knees, his body heaving as he retched black blood. The warrior was a boy, Garrett guessed no more than sixteen. He steadied his rifle and waited, willing the young man to fall to the ground again.

  The flat statement of Ready’s Henry hammered apart the smoke-streaked silence and the warrior slammed onto his side as the .44.-40 hit hard. The Crow’s legs twitched convulsively and Ready put another bullet into him. This time the young warrior lay still, dust sifting over his lifeless body.

  Garrett glanced over his shoulder. Jenny and the other women had moved closer to the herd. Durhams were much more placid than longhorns, the oxen even more so, but the shooting had the animals on edge and they were milling around, making no effort to graze—a bad sign. If they decided to run, the women would be right in their path.

  Worry nagging at him, Garrett flexed his fingers on the stock of his rifle, his eyes restlessly scanning the open land that stretched away before him. The dust had settled now, but there was no sign of the Indians.

  A fly buzzed around Garrett’s head and a hot breeze blowing from the south touched his cheeks. He wiped his sweating forehead with the back of his hand. He was still in shock from the suddenness and fury of the attack, his mind empty of thought, concentrating only on the open prairie. In the distance, to the west, wound the thin, worn ribbon of the Whoop-Up Trail, the road to freedom that could take them away from here.

  Garrett forced himself to consider the possibility that Weasel had given up the fight, then quickly dismissed the notion as his own wishful thinking.

  A slow fifteen minutes passed. The heat grew more intense and Garrett could smell his own rank sweat. Up on the hill Ready was staring into the glare of the sun-scorched prairie. The old puncher looked lean and hard, his hands unmoving on his rifle, untroubled blue eyes shaded by the wide brim of his hat.

  Zeb Ready had fought Indians before and he knew what to expect. But for his part, Garrett was at a loss. His frustration growing, he knew he could only wait helplessly for Weasel to make his next move and dictate the course of the battle.

  The sullen breeze again wafted against Garrett’s face, bringing him no coolness. His mouth was parched, but he resisted the urge to get himself a drink. He had no idea how long Weasel would keep them penned up here, and he calculated they had only enough water for a couple of days, maybe less, because what remained in the barrel would have to be shared with the horses. The arroyo trapped the sun’s heat, turning it into a stifling oven, and he
was sure that back there close to the cattle and horses, the women must be suffering.

  “Luke,” Ready called from the hill, “something’s stirring out there.”

  At first Garrett saw only the bodies of the four Crows. Beyond the dead, the prairie showed nothing at all but the same heat waves shimmering across the vast emptiness.

  Then he spotted them.

  A dozen mounted warriors were riding back and forth, leaning from the backs of their ponies, blazing tree branches in their hands.

  They were setting the grass on fire.

  “Damn it all, Luke,” Ready yelled. “I knowed them Injuns would use the breeze.”

  The tinder-dry grama grass was going up in flames and a wall of flickering red was racing across the prairie toward the arroyo, pillars of dark blue smoke rising into the sky.

  “Zeb!” Garrett yelled. “Where are they? Can you see them?”

  “They’re coming behind the smoke,” Ready answered. “You’ll see ’em sooner than you want.”

  Ready’s rifle roared, fired again, but he was shooting blind and Garrett saw no hits.

  The fire was closer now, fanning across the grass in a shallow arc, the smoke rising higher and thicker.

  Garrett caught a fleeting glimpse of a galloping Indian waving a burning branch above his head. He fired at the man but did not see the effect of his shot as the Indian disappeared into the smoke.

  Suddenly Annie Spencer was at his side, her mouth a tight line as she fought to conceal the fear that was so readily apparent in her eyes. The center of the fire was only a couple of hundred yards away and moving fast. But the outer rims of the arc were much closer, reaching out like arms to clasp the arroyo in a fiery embrace.

  “Give me your Colt, Garrett,” Annie demanded.

  The young rancher hesitated for a moment, then without a word, he drew his gun and handed it to the woman. He had read all he wanted to know in Annie’s eyes. He had realized almost from the first that she was well used to men and their ways. No doubt they’d come at her wearing different faces, saying different things, and she had prospered from their needs. But this was different. Nothing in Annie Spencer’s past could have prepared her for what would happen to her and the others if the Crows took them alive.

  Garrett thought of Jenny and understood. “Annie, if it all falls apart, I’ll tell you when,” he whispered.

  The woman nodded, her face set and determined, then she walked quickly away.

  A bullet slammed into the wagon, showering splinters into Garrett’s cheek, and another thudded into the wall of the arroyo. He raised his rifle and fired rapidly into the smoke, dusting shots along the length of the wall of flame. He heard Ready shooting steadily, but again saw no hits.

  The fire was closer now, and behind it the Crows were firing, the bullets flying into the arroyo, buzzing like angry hornets.

  Above Garrett, on the hill, Zeb Ready cried out. A bullet had crashed into the chamber of his Henry and ricocheted with lethal venom, plowing into his left shoulder, where sudden blood was splashed red on his buckskin shirt. The old man swayed to his right and his mangled rifle slipped from his fingers.

  “Zeb!” Garrett yelled. “Hold on. I’m coming up there.”

  Ready, his face ashen, straightened and waved Garrett away. “I can make it!” he hollered. “Stay right where you are.”

  The old man staggered to his feet, drew his Colt and began firing into the rapidly advancing smoke, the gun bucking wildly in his hand.

  Garrett realized their time was short. He glanced behind him and saw Annie Spencer staring intently at him, his gun hanging loose at her side. The woman had been grazed by a stray bullet, and a trickle of blood ran down her cheek.

  He only had to utter the word and she would begin shooting. At the others. At Jenny.

  Garrett’s mouth moved as he tried to say what needed to be said, but only a despairing croak escaped his lips.

  Men pray for miracles, but they cannot be summoned. They come at their own pace, at the unlikeliest moment, and usually to those who expect them least. And just as he was about to lose all hope, Luke Garrett got his miracle.

  As it will do from time to time on the plains, the breeze that had driven the fire suddenly died away to nothing, and the flames stalled right where they were, settling down to a smoldering line of charred black across the green of the prairie.

  “Fire’s going out, Luke!” Ready yelled from the hill, telling him what he already knew.

  But behind the dying flames, the Indians sat their horses and waited. They would charge again when the fire settled, and since they were much closer to the arroyo, this time there would be no stopping them.

  But Garrett was determined not to allow them that opportunity.

  “Annie!” Garrett yelled. “Come over here and bring the rest with you!”

  The woman did as she was told, yelling to the other women to join her. Aware that time was rapidly running out on him, Garrett simply said, “Help me move the wagon out of the way.”

  The women surrounded the wagon and bent to the task. At first it refused to move, but as Garrett urged and cursed them to a greater effort, the wheels creaked and began to turn, slowly in the beginning, then faster. When the wagon was clear of the canyon mouth, Garrett took his Colt from Annie, swung open the loading gate and fed a round from his cartridge belt into the empty cylinder under the hammer.

  He reholstered the gun, ran into the arroyo where the black was standing, and swung into the saddle. After a single fearful glance at the dying prairie fire, he shook out his rope and rode among the shorthorns, hazing them in the direction of the canyon mouth.

  “Zeb!” he called out. “Are you all right?”

  The old puncher was feeding shells from his belt into his Colt. “I’m still alive, Luke. If that’s what you mean.”

  “Then cover me!” Garrett yelled.

  Ready hollered a question, but Garrett ignored it. He shucked his Colt and fired a shot into the air. The startled Durhams broke into a trot, then a run as they tumbled out of the arroyo mouth and headed into the still smoking prairie.

  Garrett strung out the shorthorns and fired again. Normally the cattle would have swung away from the smoke and the last of the flickering flames, but the arcs of the fire smoldering on each side of the herd had them trapped. Thoroughly panicked, they made the choice to charge straight ahead.

  Without slowing their pace, the cows ran through the curtain of smoke and into the ranks of the waiting Crows, Garrett galloping hard behind them.

  He heard Ready’s Colt firing from the hill, and ahead of him a warrior’s pony went down, the rider hitting the ground hard. And suddenly Garrett was among the Indians as they fought to control their milling, bucking ponies.

  A painted face swam into Garrett’s view as the man swung a stone war club at his head. He ducked and triggered a shot into the Crow’s chest, but didn’t see the man go down as he galloped past him into the clear.

  The cattle were scattering across the prairie and the Crows had now recovered from their surprise. Garrett reined in the black as a dozen warriors surrounded him on all sides, their rifles trained on him. He still had his Colt, but the few shots that were left were useless against so many.

  Garrett knew it was all up with him, and he made the decision to go down fighting. The last thing he wanted was to be taken alive.

  He noticed a tall warrior on a paint pony who was wearing a bonnet of eagle feathers and a war shirt of brain tanned hide, decorated with scalp locks and ermine tails. This had to be Weasel.

  Garrett set spurs to the black and charged at the man, triggering his Colt. From somewhere behind him a rifle fired and a bullet burned across the side of his left temple. Stunned, his head reeling, he saw Weasel as an indistinct, shifting shape straight ahead of him. He fired again and again, shooting the gun dry. But the Crow still sat his horse, his Winchester held in an upraised fist. Snarling his anger, Garrett galloped up to the man and cut at him with the barrel of h
is Colt. The big Indian grinned and easily evaded the blow. His arm came down fast and the butt of his rifle crashed into the top of Garrett’s head.

  Garrett saw the grass rush up to meet him, spinning at a tremendous speed, and then he slammed headlong onto the ground and every scrap of breath was forced out of him.

  Unbidden, a thought flashed into his mind. He’d made a real bad mistake—he was still alive.

  * * *

  Luke Garrett lay stunned, gasping for air, his face buried in the grass. From somewhere he heard the soft footfalls of a horse, then something sharp prodded his back.

  “You, get up.” A man’s voice, harsh and guttural.

  Garrett finally caught a breath. He rolled on his back, his hand reaching for his gun. The Colt was gone. It must have fallen when he hit the ground. Now he remembered—it was empty, useless.

  The hammered iron point of the lance dug into Garrett’s throat, just above the collarbone. He looked up and saw the black silhouette of a mounted Indian against the glare of the sun, a halo of red and yellow flashing around him as his pony moved.

  “Up,” the man said. The lance dug deeper, its sharp point drawing a trickle of blood.

  Garrett struggled to his feet and stood there swaying. The lance was still at his throat.

  A rawhide loop was thrown from behind him and when it settled across his upper arms it was jerked tight, almost pulling him off his feet. Garrett again looked at the man on the horse. It was Weasel, his black eyes hard and merciless and full of hate.

  Where were Zeb and the others? Where was Jenny?

  Garrett turned his head and glanced over his shoulder. He saw no sign of Zeb or any of the women. The arroyo was seemingly empty of life.

  Suddenly Weasel swung the lance away from Garrett’s throat. He brandished it high above his head, then thrust the iron tip again and again in the direction of the arroyo, yelling something Garrett did not understand.

  The twenty or so braves clustered around Weasel yipped their excitement and began to check their weapons.

  Garrett glanced behind him to the canyon once more. So Zeb and the women were still alive—Jenny was still alive. Beyond the point where the cattle and horses had been gathered, the arroyo narrowed, its sides becoming much steeper. Canny old Zeb had probably withdrawn to the narrowest spot, where the Indians would have to come at him two or three abreast and he could hold them off with his Colt—at least for a while.