by Lou Bradshaw
Finally, I heard his reply, “HALOOO, SENOR MAX”. Only there wasn’t an X on the end. It sounded like Mah. It really didn’t matter, we’d found each other despite the wind and rain. He was sure happy to see me, but he was even happier to see his horse… unharmed.
We rode back a mile or two till we figured that was about where the whole business got crazy, and then we started back up toward the herd. We spread out, with him going to the right and me taking the left side. I found them in bunches, and I assumed he did too. We just got them started up trail, and they were eager to go. They’d been almighty scared, and I guess they found some comfort in having us take charge again. After all weren’t we the ones who sang them to sleep every night? Weren’t we the one that kept the varmints away and found grass and water for them? If they’d known where and why we were moving them up the trail, they wouldn’t find our presence quite so comforting… cattle sure are stupid. I guess that’s why we have no qualms about eating them. We wouldn’t eat a dog or a horse unless we were starving, mostly because we think they’re so smart that it would be some kind of sacrilege. But we wouldn’t think twice about eating a cow or pig, even though some folks claim pigs to be intelligent, they don’t look or act smart.
The grey light of dawn found us pushing several hundred head in front of us. A few of those critters started bawling along the way, and that seemed to draw others out of the dark. We had to shoot a couple that we found crippled up with broken legs, or ones that had been gored by their neighbors and had their guts dragging the ground. The wolves, coyotes and buzzards would be sitting pretty for the next couple of days.
Even with the sky starting to lighten up we still couldn’t see much. All we could do was push them forward until we caught up with the rest of the herd… if there was a herd. Finally the sun poked his head out above the plains and we could see the tracks of the main bunch. So we followed them.
When we found the herd, it was out in the open, and feeding. Those cattle didn’t seem to be inclined to do anything but eat and splatter the prairie with cow pies. Ben said he reckoned that there were near to three thousand with the ones Jesus and I brought in.
“I can take the loss,” he said, “but there’s still been no sign of Tater and Dick. I’m beginning to worry about em.”
As we sat talking, the boys would bring in two or five or fifteen steers at a time, from all directions. It would do to keep them here for a day and let them settle into the idea that all was well.
“Ben,” I said, “I think, I’ll take me a little mosey up the way. We know this is a well used cattle trail, but after that rain, it’s hard to tell how new or old the tracks are. Besides if Tate and the boy were pushed ahead of the herd, there might be signs up ahead. Anything I see up there, I’ll start it back toward you.”
Delgado brought the horses in and the chuck wagon along with it, so I switched my saddle to my own horse. He was a good one, and in country like this, you never knew when you might need a good horse. Horses are social critters. They like to be in a crowd. They don’t seem to care if it’s a crowd of horses or a crowd of men; they seem to need the comfort of their friends around them. That’s why there wasn’t much worry about the remuda after the stampede. When things settled down, those horses would come looking for their friends or their people.
I stopped by the chuck wagon for breakfast and picked up a little extra grub in case I was out over night. The next thing I did was check my guns. After the rain, mud, and more rain, I didn’t want any surprises if I had reason to need either one in a hurry. My rifle had been more exposed to the elements than my Colt, so I gave it some extra attention. Within twenty minutes, I was moving north along the Goodnight Loving trail.
The grass was lush and the trail was cut by any number of rivers and streams, so the cattle wouldn’t lose any weight on their way to the steam cars. As I rode, I tried to determine if the tracks I was following were from some of our herd or from the last trail drive that came through. They were pretty well washed out. I especially kept my eyes open for horse tracks… shod or otherwise. I kept myself as alert a possible, considering that I didn’t have any sleep last night. It had been at least thirty hours since I last rolled out of my blankets, but I was used to it.
If there’s one thing a gambling man has to learn, it’s that you won’t ever keep regular hours. I’ve seen games go on for four or five days, with one, two or four hour breaks mixed in here and there. When one of those breaks came, you’d better close your eyes fast and get right to it. Fortunately, those marathon games don’t come around too often, but when they do, it’s for big stakes.
Consumed in my own fatigue, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what I was or wasn’t hearing or seeing. To be perfectly honest with myself and anyone else who’d care to know it, I was just going where my horse took me. According to the sun, I’d been heading north about an hour give or take a little.
Something was bothering me, but I couldn’t tell what it was, mainly because I was too busy listening to the fall of each of my horse’s hooves. Clop, clop and clop they went. When I realized that I was being lulled into a state of near sleep in the saddle, I forced myself back into the conscious world. Snapping my head up and rubbing grit out of my eyes, I realized what it was that had been bothering me… Cattle.
Chapter 8
I’d been so near to being unconscious that I hadn’t recognized the sound of cattle up ahead, and it was no little bunch. I took a quick look around, and saw nothing but broken prairie. I pulled my Winchester from its boot and jacked a shell into the chamber. Then I nudged my horse into a trot.
Coming over a low ridge and around a small hill, I saw cattle, but no riders. There was quite a bunch, and they were just milling around grazing and doing the things steers will do when left to their own devices. My first reaction was that this bunch ran themselves out and just stopped here of their own accord.
They were all MB connected beeves, or at least that was the only brand I saw. I started moving around the herd with the idea of trying to get them moving back toward the main bunch. I figured that I could get them moving without too much trouble, but controlling them would be another trick. It would be all I could do to just keep them together right here without some of them roaming off down a gully or up a river.
I’d just have to sit here and try to hold them together until the rest of the herd got here… if I could. So I started to circle around em just to give the idea that I was in charge, and I wasn’t about to take any nonsense from em. Like I’d said before “Cattle are stupid.”
As I rode, I had a coil of rope in hand and used it to shoo one or another into forming a tighter bunch. If I could keep them in a tight group, I’d stand a much better chance of keeping them together. As I neared the half way point, I spotted something moving off to my right near a single tree standing all alone amidst some sage and other brush. I started moving in that direction thinking that there may be some critters feeding around that tree. Well, they’d just have to join the rest in my tight group. Then I saw the movement again, and it wasn’t any kind of cow critter, it was a horse critter.
Giving my horse a little nudge in the ribs, I moved a little quicker than before for the tree. It could be Tate or Dick’s horse. I hated to think what might have happened if one of those boys had come out of the saddle during that mess. If they’d fallen under the herd, there wouldn’t be anything left to bury. They’d just be part of the Goodnight Loving trail mixed with the mud and muck.
It didn’t take long to close the distance between the herd and that tree. I was there in no time at all. Coming out of the brush and into the open, I saw them both sprawled out on the grass like they’d been tossed there by some giant hand rolling dice. I pulled up swearing. I never liked to see anything wasted, and these two young lives had been needlessly thrown away. Their bodies looked as if they’d been dragged through all kinds of hell, with clothing ripped and mud all over everything from face to foot.
I didn’t even have a
shovel to bury them. I’d have to wait for Ben and the rest to get here. I swore some more and turned away to go gather up the horse and look for the other one if it was still alive.
“Hey, Max, you got any coffee with you?”
I nearly snapped my spine spinning around to see Tate sitting up scratching and stretching. Dick was starting to stir as well.
“Damn!” I said. “I thought you boys were dead. I didn’t have a shovel, so I was just getting ready to pile a bunch of rocks on top of you to keep the buzzards off… You saved me a lot of work. Now you’re not foolin’ with me are you? Promise me that you really are alive and not dead, or else I’m going to start piling rocks.”
They both swore that they were still among the living, so I got a fire going, made coffee and Tate fixed the grub I’d brought along.
The story they told, was one I’d heard before in one camp or another. They’d gotten caught up in the stampede and were swept along with the herd, just staying alive. When the cattle finally quit running, they simply bunched them and then sprawled out on the grass to rest a little before they started riding herd. Seems like a little rest meant something different to boys their age. It probably meant the same thing to me six or seven years ago.
They figured there were four to five hundred head in this bunch, and I concurred. I tried counting them, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. It would be easier counting stars, stars don’t move about.
We sent Dick back to the herd to let Ben know what was up here, and we’d just wait here for them to catch up. There was no sense in moving these cattle back down trail just so they could come up trail again. We told him to bring some extra food, bedrolls, and fresh mounts. If Ben kept the herd back there for an extra day, we’d be getting pretty hungry.
The herd wasn’t more than six or seven miles back, but it would take Dick several hours to get there, get supplies and get back, so we went to work riding herd. They were tired, and they had feed at their feet, so they weren’t likely to take any notions. But we weren’t taking any chances. So around and around we went. We were backed up to the foothills on the left and broken country on the right. We had pretty much control over the cattle, but we didn’t know what or who was up there in those hills or out on the broken plains. So we took our simple job seriously.
Dick got back before dark, and he was herding three horses ahead of him, one of which had a pack on it. That should be enough. The pack had enough food to take care of those two growing boys and myself for several days if need be.
“Tater,” Dick said, “when I was riding back up here, I got a good look at what we come through last night. Gawd almighty, boy, we’re plum lucky to be alive… I swear to goodness, that’s some rough country in the daylight. I was too scared and busy hangin’ on last night to even pray…. Whooee, boy, I just don’t never want to think about it.”
Tate stirred up the fire and went to cooking, while Dick and I saddled up fresh horses and went back to making those critters feel at home and well loved.
The next day about mid afternoon, Ben and the main herd showed up. He gave them a little rest, graze and water then we moved on. He said he’d rather spend the night away from those foot hills, so we headed northeast toward the open country.
Now, open country isn’t what it sounds like out here. You imagine that you can see for a thousand miles, but it’s full of gullies, arroyos, humps, bumps, and dips. You could hide the whole Comanche nation in one of those low spots… or a band of rustlers.
Day in and day out, nothing seemed to change much. It was up with the sun, pushing cattle where they didn’t want to go, and getting them out of where they did want to go, like stuck in the muck of a water hole. Cattle don’t seem to realize that when you sink in the mud up to your knees, going forward isn’t the direction you want to go, but they do it anyway. It’s all part of the job.
It was late enough in the season that floods weren’t a big problem unless of course we ran into heavy rain, but the rivers and streams were running a little high and deep, so crossings needed to be well scouted. In some cases the fords were several feet higher than what was considered comfortable, but we didn’t lose any animals.
Our friends the Arapaho bunch showed up again, and said that they had cut a lot of Cheyenne sign. There was a good deal of movement, but in small bunches. They were out without their women and old people, which meant raiding parties or hunting parties or both.
Ben asked if they had seen anymore of the white men whose trail they had crossed back at the pass. They said they had not.
That might have meant that Ralls and or Slack had given up on the idea of taking the herd, or it could mean that the Arapaho just hadn’t seen them. Personally, I couldn’t see either one of them passing up all or part of a nice fat herd like this one. In my humble opinion, it would be my guess that Ralls and Slack were working together and recruiting men.
The herd had been pretty well behaved and docile since their brief but scary bout with mass craziness. We’d lost twenty or so head, but that was to be expected. Cattle are prey, and as with any other type of prey, anything unexpected can start them running wild. As big and formidable as a steer may be, he is still a grass eater and grass eaters suspect that anything they don’t understand is a meat eater of some kind, and their first instinct is to run. And run they did, but they got over it.
Ben had started scouting in the hills on our left and the prairie on our right. He said he’d give a case of cartridges to see Rubio riding up now, whatever that meant. On his second day out, he came in from the prairie and changed horses. When he put a rope on the dun he called Dusty, I knew something was up and rode to where he was finishing tightening the cinch. He’d often said that Dusty didn’t have the best blood, but he was savvy, tough, steady, and all mustang.
“Max,” he said, “I spotted some shod prints in a gully over to the east of here. It looks like four or five horsemen came through sometime last night or early this morning. If they were just travelers, they’d have come to camp for some chuck and coffee. Furthermore, you rarely see groups that large traveling together off the trail like that…. Pass the word and have everyone riding with their rifle in hand and ready.”
I told him that I’d have them all ready and keep an eye peeled in that direction, if he’d watch to the west. He said that was his intention. He was going to scout the hills to the west. He then said, “Tell the men if they see anything or anybody they don’t know bang off a round. If they’re in doubt, bang it off into em.” And he was in the saddle and gone.
I went around the herd and let everyone know what was up and put everyone on the ready. Then I took my place somewhat wide of the right flank. With fully loaded Winchester plus one in the chamber resting across my lap, and the thong off my holster gun, I was as ready as I would be. If in fact there was a plan to hit the herd, and I didn’t for one second doubt that it was in the wind, we didn’t know where they’d hit. They could hit the lead, middle or rear. So I positioned myself a little forward of middle and kept an eye on the rear as well.
We rode uneasy for several hours. We were just moving them toward the railhead. That’s all we could do. It was their ball; all we could do was dance when the music started. We wouldn’t have the luxury of choosing our partners for the dance either, they’d be choosing us. Like I said, I was as ready as I would be.
Crack… crack… crack. Three rifle shots rang out to the west up in the hills. My first reaction was to pull back the hammer on the Winchester. I was hoping that Ben was the shooter and not the target. Before the reports started echoing through the hills, five mounted men came storming out of a draw not fifty feet ahead of me, and then there were four mounted and one rider less horse. I was shooting as fast as I could jack shells into the chamber and pull the trigger.
A hundred yards ahead I could see Jesus doing the same thing. We had them in a crossfire. One rider was down and one horse down, the others were taking lead and trying to return fire from pitching and bucking horses. We ju
st kept shooting until they had themselves turned and heading up the draw. It was over just about a quick as it had begun.
One man was afoot and was trying to run up the draw limping badly. I put spurs to my mount and ran him down. That horse’s shoulder struck him and sent him head over heels into the dirt and rocks. He rolled over and came up with a pistol in his hand. I wasn’t about to give him a chance to get it lined up. I split his breast bone. I figured this wasn’t one of Reno’s better days.
About an hour later Ben came riding up to me and asked how we had fared. I told him, “There’s two dead outlaws, and at least two or three of ‘em bleedin’… If you’d started shootin’ a minute later, they’d have come out that draw right in my face… I can assume that it was you doin’ the rifle work up there can’t I?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I was at least two hundred yards off and maybe more when I spotted ‘em. All I could do was scatter em, and give you boys some warning. I couldn’t even see the ones on this side of the herd. Any of our men get hurt?”
I told him that no one was hurt. “Hell, the herd didn’t even slow down. They moved on like nothin’ was happening. Jesus and I had them in a crossfire and they never really got out of the draw…. Those boys just picked worst possible time and place to come roarin’ out of there.”
“I looks like they were plannin’ to hit the middle and run off with either the front or back part…. When I started shootin’ at them over there, they just scattered. I doubt if they even knew who or how many were thrownin’ lead at ‘em. I didn’t see any hits, but I didn’t expect to at that distance.
“From the looks of the two who didn’t make it, I’d say we definitely have Slack and Ralls to deal with. The first one to fall was one of Slack’s herd cutters, the one who lost his horse and tried to run was Reno. Whether they started out together or not doesn’t matter… they’re together now.”