The Tenderfoot Trail

by Ralph Compton

  Entering the canyon again, Garrett found thin cover from the sunlight under a mesquite bush. He lay down on his back and tilted his hat over his eyes. All he could do now was try to sleep and wait for darkness.

  Despite the raging thirst that ceaselessly tormented him, he drifted off, lulled by the silence and the surrender to sleep of his tired body.

  An hour went by and Garrett did not wake as a quick shadow flitted across his legs, thrown by the noiseless passing of a great gray wolf, its head turned to him, the amber eyes watchful and alert.

  The day was shading into night when Garrett woke with a start. He’d been dreaming of water, running cool and clear in the stream near his cabin. In the strange mother-of-pearl twilight between sleep and waking he’d thrown himself on his belly, shoved his burning face into the stream and drunk deep. He’d lifted his mouth from the water, his chin dripping—and had looked into the eyes of a great wolf that had been intently watching him.

  A wild cry died in Garrett’s throat as he sat upright, the dream slowly fading. He shook his head and, as is the way of men who have ridden lonely trails, he said aloud, “Gettin’ spooked in your old age, Luke.”

  His voice was a hard, dry croak, like the rustle of fallen leaves, and his ravenous thirst was still an agony much worse than the throbbing of the wound in his chest.

  Unsteadily Garrett climbed to his feet. He waited for a few moments until his world stopped spinning and came to a lurching halt. Then he set his feet in motion toward the mouth of the arroyo.

  When he reached the trail, the waxing moon lit the way ahead, angling to the northwest toward the Marias. His boots kicking up little puffs of dust, Garrett began to walk. He had gone a mile, maybe less, when he began to stumble and stretched his length on the ground.

  It would have been so easy to lie right where he was, his face in the dirt, and let the endless sleep take him. In any case, Garrett doubted he could get up again. Better to rest and perhaps gather his strength. A red mesquite bug crawled past his face, making a small sound in the dust, and headed toward the hills where the shrub from which it got its name grew. As Garrett watched, the insect was soon swallowed up by the darkness.

  He lay still, thoughts without form or order tumbling around in his mind. Where was he going? After a while he remembered. He was headed north on the Whoop-Up Trail toward the Marias. There was water there, water that would save his life. But he tried to recall something else—something urgent. Now he brought to mind what it was. He was trying to save Jenny, free her from Thetas Kane.

  Garrett shook his head, trying to concentrate, attempting to shove his terrible thirst and his weakness away from him.

  Jenny needed him. He had to make the effort.

  Gathering the last of his strength he pushed hard on his hands and raised his head and chest, his back arching. For a few moments he let his head hang between his arms. Then he rolled onto his side and struggled to a sitting position, breathing hard.

  The wolf had been one with the night, but now it emerged from the darkness and trotted toward Garrett, a sense of purpose apparent in the way the animal carried its head—low, watchful.

  Garrett saw the wolf come at him and he drew his Colt. When the big lobo was a few yards away, it stopped, studying the man, its eyes calm, measured and knowing.

  Many considered the wolf to be a savage, merciless killer, imprinting the lowest trait of the human personality on a creature they neither knew nor understood. But the Indians, living closer to nature, understood the wolf well. To them the wolf was a sage, a teacher, and they believed only the mountains had lived long enough not to be stirred by its cry in the night.

  Garrett thumbed back the hammer of his gun. “You stay away from me,” he croaked, his voice tense. “Or I’ll drop you right where you stand.”

  It is the wolf’s business to know when a creature is sick and weak, since this makes the chase and the kill all the easier. But the lobo, aware of the human’s sorry state, displayed no aggression. It sat down a few yards from Garrett, and when its eyes brushed his, he saw only a fixed interest in their amber depths.

  Garrett had the cattleman’s inherent antipathy and suspicion of the wolf, and it was in his mind to gun the animal and have it done. But there was something in the huge wolf’s demeanor that gave him pause. It did not act like an animal that planned to attack him.

  Then what did it want?

  The wolf rose to its feet, trotted away for ten yards, then stopped, looking back at Garrett. Was it trying to lead him someplace?

  Figuring he had nothing to lose, he eased down the hammer of the Colt and shoved it into the holster. After a struggle, he climbed to his feet and walked toward the wolf. Wary now, the lobo trotted into the darkness and was standing patiently waiting when Garrett, moving slowly and unsteadily, caught up with it.

  The wolf led him into the darkness of the surrounding hills and entered a wide coulee, a few stunted spruce and mesquite growing on both slopes. In the moonlight the wolf’s gray coat gleamed white as it moved like a silent spirit through the gloom. Garrett, weak from thirst, tried his best to follow, though his progress was slow, marked by constant falls that scraped skin off his hands and elbows.

  But the wolf’s patience was limitless. Each time Garrett stumbled and fell, the animal stood still and waited until he got to his feet. Then it again showed the way.

  But to what?

  There was a growing suspicion in Garrett’s mind that the wolf was leading him into a trap. Perhaps the entire pack was lying in wait just ahead to jump on him and tear him apart.

  Garrett smiled into the night, his cracked lips hurting. He was dead anyway. The wolves would just make his dying a lot faster, and maybe that was one of nature’s small mercies.

  The walls of the arroyo narrowed, so close that the prickly pear on the slopes tore at Garrett’s chaps as he lurched past. From somewhere quite close a horned owl questioned the night, but if the rising moon heard, it did not deign to answer.

  Deep in the arroyo the wolf stopped, and when Garrett got close it loped up the side of a hill to his left and stopped on the crest, a silhouette against the star-scattered sky.

  Garrett looked around him. There was no sound, no movement. Why had the wolf led him here and then moved on? He shifted his feet and felt the ground give way under his boot heels. He pressed the sole of his right boot on the ground, feeling the dirt yield. Garrett got down on one knee and pushed with his hand. It came away black with mud.

  Now he knew what the wolf had planned. It had led him to a seep fed by an underground spring deep beneath the hills, perhaps running all the way from the Marias.

  Digging his fingers into the damp dirt, Garrett spread mud on his cracked lips. Then he grabbed a handful and shoved it into his mouth, trying to suck out the moisture. It didn’t work. He spat out the dirt and kneeled, frantically digging into the soft ground with both hands.

  He’d dug to the depth of a foot before he felt water on the backs of his fingers. Steeling himself to wait, he let a slow minute pass, then another, before he tested the hole again. There was an inch or two of water in the bottom. Garrett lay on his belly and shoved his face deep into the hole. The water was muddy and brackish, but to a thirsty man struggling for survival it tasted like nectar.

  Garrett drank the hole dry, then waited, his face covered in mud, until it began to fill again. This time he paused longer, until there was six inches of water in the hole, and he drank deeply again.

  For the best part of the next hour, Garrett sat by the seep waiting for the hole to fill up, then drinking. Finally the dehydrated tissues of his body were saturated and his cracked lips had already begun to heal.

  He stepped away from the seep and sat with his back against the southern slope of the coulee, suddenly wishful for a smoke. His fingers strayed to his shirt pocket, but found only the buckskin bag with the three mutilated double eagles inside. Then he remembered he’d stashed an emergency supply of tobacco, papers and matches in the pocke
t of his chaps.

  Garrett got out his makings, pleasantly surprised that they were still intact, and built himself a smoke. He lit the cigarette and dragged deep, enjoying the harsh bite of the tobacco, and turned his eyes to the opposite hill.

  The wolf was gone.

  Garrett wondered why the animal had led him to water. Out of the goodness of its heart? That was hardly likely. Then how to explain the big lobo’s unnatural behavior?

  It was then that Garrett recalled the terrible bullet scar across the animal’s face. Had it been a victim of Thetas Kane and his wolfers? It could have been shot and somehow survived. Wolves mate for life—perhaps the lobo had lost its female to Kane’s guns or poison traps.

  The giant wolf was an intelligent animal. It could have remembered Kane and planned its revenge, or at least instinctively recognized the man as a predator and danger to the pack that had to be removed. It had chosen Garrett as an unlikely ally, temporarily adopting him as a pack member. Garrett had also been shot by Kane and had the scar to prove it. Thus he and the wolf were kindred spirits, united by the renegade’s bullets.

  The more he thought about it, the more Garrett figured this had to be the case. Somehow the wild, ferocious creature had figured out that Garrett also planned the demise of the human it either hated or greatly feared. By necessity, it had decided they would unite in a common cause—the destruction of Thetas Kane.

  It was a stretch and Garrett knew it. Yet the Indians believed the lobo was a highly intelligent animal that left the pack to seek wisdom, returning after many years to share its knowledge.

  Garrett harbored no such illusions. The animal had acted out of pure instinct, yet there was no getting around the fact that a mighty smart, and very strange, wolf had saved his life.

  Chapter 15

  Garrett finished his cigarette, smoked another, then rose to his feet. He felt stronger, and the wound in his chest did not pain him so badly.

  He had no way to carry water, so he lay by the seep and drank again. This time there was maybe half a gallon of water in the hole and he finished it all. When the hole began to fill again, he untied the bandana from around his neck, soaked it thoroughly and washed the mud off his face.

  Retying the bandana as he walked, Garrett left the canyon and headed back to the trail. There were still several hours of darkness left, and he must use them before the heat of the day forced him into shelter.

  As the moon dropped in the sky the way ahead became shadowed. He stumbled often on deep wagon ruts that had baked hard in the sun. He shared the cowboy’s aversion to walking, and as he trudged on through the dark tunnel of night, his skintight high-heeled boots punished his feet. But he gave no thought to stopping. Ahead of him on the trail was Jenny Canfield, the girl he intended to marry, and she would be looking for him to save her.

  The girl he intended to marry . . .

  That thought surprised Garrett. Yet, as he walked through the darkness he recognized the truth of it. When he’d first set eyes on Jenny he’d felt like the man who had discovered fire, delighting in her warmth, blinded by her bright beauty. To live without loving Jenny would be to not live at all, something he dared not even try to imagine.

  After this was all over he would turn his back forever on the Whoop-Up Trail and take Jenny as his wife to his ranch in the long shadows of the mountains.

  That thought pleased Garrett immensely and he smiled into the gloom. He was still smiling as the long night began to flee the dawn and the awakening birds rustled among the thickets of juniper and mesquite.

  Instinctively the young rancher glanced behind him as the darkness faded into a blue-gray half-light. He stopped and turned. Far in the distance he had caught the pinpoint glow of a campfire, and there it was again, dim as a fading star in a lightening sky. As Garrett watched, the fire winked out and disappeared.

  There was still someone dogging his back trail, but he decided he would not let it worry him, at least for the time being.

  Because right at the moment he had other problems.

  Now that the darkness had gone, he saw where the tracks of a wagon and horsemen had left the trail and turned directly east toward the Marias River. If the night had lasted only a few minutes longer he would have walked right past the spot without seeing it.

  Garrett stepped to the place and scanned the distance ahead. The wagon had left wheel tracks on the grass as it swung off the Whoop-Up, and at least a dozen horses had followed. He kneeled and studied the bent-over grama. The blades were already straightening, so the wagon had passed over them many hours earlier, possibly even the day before.

  Now Garrett remembered the half-empty water barrel. That was not nearly enough water for Kane’s men, the five women, the draft oxen and the horses. Undoubtedly the wolfer must have made the decision to head for the Marias to refill the barrel and water the livestock.

  Garrett tried to remember what he’d learned about the trail and the river. He had walked a fair piece in the night and he must be near to the spot where the Marias began a gradual bend before crossing the Whoop-Up about twenty miles to the northwest.

  Slowed by the oxen, Kane must have decided it was better to head due east for water, even though the detour would take him out of his way. But the river was much closer at this point, just nine or ten miles, and worth the delay, especially with the blistering daytime temperature climbing well above ninety-five degrees, by Garrett’s calculation.

  But was Kane still there? He could have watered the stock and then headed back to the Whoop-Up, possibly angling across the flat to meet up with the trail again farther north.

  Garrett was at a crossroads, but his own need for water forced his decision for him. With luck, if he kept to the trail it would be a couple of days before he reached the Marias. He would be suffering terribly from thirst by then. If he was unlucky, something as simple as a twisted ankle could mean death in this wilderness.

  His mind made up, he climbed to his feet and began to follow the wagon tracks.

  Just to the south rose a ridge of low hills, their slopes covered in stands of cactus and mesquite. Scattered among them were streaks of goldenrod with its shy yellow flowers. The air smelled of dried grass and heat, and as he walked Garrett knew the rising sun would soon make the morning hotter still.

  He followed the lay of the hills toward the river and after an hour he stopped in the spindly shade of a solitary juniper growing at the base of a slope and built a cigarette.

  Around him the land lay still and silent, hammered into meek submission by the heat. Even the vultures seemed content to glide lazily across the blue face of the sky, riding the high currents where the air was cool.

  Thirst was again nagging at Garrett and his cigarette tasted harsh and dry. He ground out the butt under his heel and his eyes lifted to a sudden flicker of movement on the hill behind him.

  The wolf was standing there just below the crest, where it would not be skylined, watching him. Garrett waved to the animal and resumed his walk toward the Marias. He glanced back and the wolf was still there, unmoving, its eyes following him.

  He trudged across the grass for another thirty minutes. The sun rose, burning hot and merciless, and his thirst again began to plague him. How much longer to the Marias? As far as Garrett was concerned it could not come fast enough.

  Ahead of him the land danced in the heat, the horizon shimmering where it rose up to meet the white-hazed arch of the sky. Once he saw a small herd of antelope walking in the direction of the river. He tried to keep the animals in sight, but the moving veil of distance and heat soon swallowed them, for a moment the legs of the pronghorns looking strangely elongated as they melted into the shifting mirage and disappeared.

  A few minutes later another figure slowly emerged from the blurred landscape and Garrett stopped and watched as it grew closer. The gaunt, undulating silhouette settled into a defined shape, all sharp corners with no suggestion of softness. Yet it was obviously the form of a woman wearing a black dress—and i
t could only be the thin, angular Annie Spencer.

  Garrett stayed where he was and let Annie come to him. When the woman was a couple of yards away she stopped, her eyebrows arching in surprise. “Hell, cowboy, I thought you were dead.”

  “Came close,” the young rancher acknowledged. He touched his pocket so Annie could hear the chink of coins. “Kane’s bullet hit these. Drove a double eagle between my ribs and made me bite the ground, though.”

  Garrett’s glance brushed the woman from head to toe. She looked tired and she’d aged even more in the past few days. Her hard eyes betrayed what could have been fear, knotted up with anxiety and mistrust. Finally he spoke the question he’d been dreading to ask: “How is Jenny?”

  A slight smile tugged at the corners of Annie’s mouth. “She’s doing all right so far. A couple of the boys have claimed her. But nothing will happen until Thetas gets the money from the miners at the fort. I guess when the time comes her suitors will settle their dispute over Jenny with guns. That’s how they usually decide things.”

  Garrett shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. I aim to rescue Jenny and reckon with Kane”—his fingers touched his bloodstained shirt pocket again—“for this and for Zeb.”

  Annie laughed, a small, humorless sound in the quiet that surrounded them. “Cowboy, Thetas is way more than a match for you, and so are each and every one of the nine or ten he’s got with him. Take my advice—head back to your ranch in the mountains and forget you ever heard of Jenny Canfield. If you don’t, Thetas will kill you for sure this time.”

  Garrett let that go. Annie carried a canteen slung from her shoulder and his thirst raged at him. But he did not ask her for a drink. She would have to make the offer.

  “What are you doing out here, Annie?” he asked, his voice a dry rasp. “Did you run away?”