The Palo Duro Trail

by Ralph Compton

  He waited until the dust dissipated and then reloaded his rifle, shoved it into its boot. He turned to the herd, saw that some men were tending to the wounded, while others were trying to calm the herd and keep them from stampeding.

  “Manny, let’s string ’em out,” Flagg said. “Keep ’em movin’ ahead. Don’t give ’em time to think.”

  “Yeah, boss,” Chavez said. He and the two riders from the Double C started cutting through the head of the herd, sending small bunches of cattle after the lead steer and the bunch following it into the stream heading northwest.

  Flagg watched the herd for any sign of revolt, barking orders, holding the strays in, helping where he could. Soon the herd was strung out and moving at a good pace, settling down, following blindly behind the cattle in the lead.

  “Manny, you let ’em graze when you think they’re ready. I’ll have riders keep an eye on our back trail. The drovers are set.”

  Chavez nodded as Flagg rode up to Jimmy.

  “They drive off any horses?” Flagg asked.

  “I don’t know. I left Little Jake to watch the remuda.”

  “Let’s find out,” Flagg said.

  Little Jake’s face was drained of color. He had an old cap-and-ball pistol in his hand and it was shaking as if he had the palsy.

  “Lose any horseflesh, Little Jake?” Gough asked.

  “Nary a one, Jimmy. I didn’t even see one Comanche come near. But I was ready to shoot if one did.”

  “Good man, Little Jake,” Flagg said. “Now put that pistol away before you shoot one of the horses in the ass.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bogel said, only too glad to finally be told what to do.

  “And when you get paid, get yourself a good Colt and throw that one away,” Flagg said, “or use it for a sashweight when you build yourself a house.”

  “It’s been a right good pistol, Mr. Flagg.”

  “And so was the sword in its time, son.”

  Jimmy chuckled. Little Jake looked puzzled as he holstered the black powder weapon, an 1851 Navy Colt.

  “Golly, Jimmy,” Little Jake Bogel said, “Mr. Flagg talked to me.”

  “Just hope he don’t talk to you when he’s got a burr under his blanket.”

  Then Jimmy saw men carrying the dead to a little hill alongside the trail. Tears stung his eyes and he had to take deep breaths to keep from getting sick to his stomach.

  Little Jake leaned out from the saddle and emptied his breakfast onto the lone prairie as buzzards appeared out of nowhere and made lazy circles in the sky.

  Chapter 23

  Firefly became Dag’s chosen horse and it felt good to be back in the saddle again. They had come through rain and nights with the cold north winds blowing off the distant mountains, and he rode with the memory of them all back at that small hill with six rocky mounds paying their respects to the men who had died the day the Comanches attacked and robbed them of a dozen head of cattle, brands of which would never be known. He wept when Matlee read off the names of the dead, his own hands, and Barry’s: Ed Langley, Doofus Wallace, Paco Noriega, and Matlee’s hands, Tommy Colgan, Billy Lee Grant, Doug Hazlett.

  They still had plenty of hands, too many, really, with the two Double C men, but all of them felt the loss of those six men keenly and deeply, as if part of their lives had been torn away from them, leaving them hollow inside, with the faces of the dead fading from memory at the end of each passing day.

  And Dag remembered Fingers taking him from the wagon when he was so sick, to relieve himself and crying out for Laura in his delirium for a time, until he only called out for Jo, and Laura’s face was fading too. When he tried to think of her, her face would change and he would see only Jo’s and he cursed his memory and himself for being so faithless. But Jo had been his ministering angel, and when he saw her bending over him, in the soft twilight, spooning hot broth into his mouth, he wanted to draw her to him and hold her tight and run his fingers through her hair and kiss that little rosebud of a mouth and make it flower.

  The wound had changed him, Dag reasoned. He would return to his true nature one day. Maybe when the drive was over, or when he was back home with Laura and their little baby. The place where the bullet had furrowed through his flesh had long since healed and he had full use of his arm. Once in a while, if he moved it in a certain way, he would feel a slight twinge, but he didn’t know if it was real or only his skin’s memory, like a man with an amputated foot would feel his toes wriggle when there were no toes there anymore.

  They had passed the little town of Conchas, where they stocked up on supplies, and were now at the swollen Mora River, where they had been waiting two days to find a ford to cross. Dag was searching for a ford now, without finding any place shallow enough to risk putting cattle into without putting them and the drovers in danger. He rode back to where the herd was bunched, to see if anyone else had found a suitable ford.

  “The water isn’t going down none,” Flagg said, “and it looks like we’re going to get more rain. Look at that sky to the west.”

  Dag saw the black thunderheads gathering over the mountains, heading their way slowly. He shook his head.

  “We’ve been here two days, Jubal,” he said.

  “And we could be here a week. Dag, I’m going to send some of the men back. We can’t afford to keep ’em on the payroll. Fingers is strapped for supplies until we get to the next town.”

  “We stocked up in Conchas.”

  “Some of the food was plumb spoiled,” Flagg said.

  “Shit.”

  “Who do you want to send back?”

  Dag thought for a moment. He looked at the men, many of whom had started to grumble, and the night before, some of his hands got into a fracas with some Box M drovers. Fists flew and blood was spilled. Hard feelings remained.

  “How many?” Dag asked.

  “We only need a dozen men at most to finish the drive. Maybe fifteen.”

  “I think we’ll need fifteen, at least.”

  “Make your choice, Dag.”

  Dag drew a deep breath. “We can send Chad Myers back. He’s got a family that’s probably hurtin’ by now. And Carl Costello. Ricardo Mendoza, maybe. That’s about all I could spare.”

  “All right. Matlee will send a couple or three back. I think you’re keeping the best hands, Dag.”

  “Thanks.”

  But it was a tough decision. Over the miles, he had drawn very close to not only his men, but to Matlee’s. And the two hands from the Double C were working out fine. They had a good crew.

  Vince Sutphen, one of the two Double C hands, rode up from the east.

  “I think I found a place to ford,” he told Flagg.

  “Show me,” Flagg said.

  Dag followed them downriver, past an oxbow, to a place where the river widened. He could see riffles showing that it was more shallow there than up above.

  “Did you try it?” Flagg asked.

  Sutphen shook his head.

  “Well, head on into it, Vince. Take your time.”

  Dag and Jubal watched as Sutphen put his horse in at a point where the bank was low. His horse stepped out gingerly, eyes rolling in their sockets showing more white than brown. The water came up to the horse’s knees just off the bank, but on firmer footing, the water was only ankle deep. Sutphen turned his horse halfway across and rode toward the hollow of the bend, stepping off gravel in the shallows. The water was belly deep for a few yards; then he was again in shallow water, clear to the opposite bank.

  “Good enough,” Flagg said.

  “Water’s awful swift,” Sutphen said. “My horse liked to have went down there a couple of times. I had to hold him against the current. Was a cow to founder, she’d be carried off.”

  Flagg looked downstream. The river narrowed and the water roared just beyond the ford, rushing between its banks.

  “All right, Vince. Come on back and see how it goes,” Flagg said. He turned to Dag. “We’re still droppin’ calves,” he said. �
�Wolves carried off two last night, but we still got a passel of ’em.”

  “I know,” Dag said. “They’d never get across here on their own.”

  “We’ll have to carry ’em acrost,” Flagg said.

  “Then we will.”

  Sutphen had to fight the current coming back over a slightly different course. They could see the horse wobble and falter, slip and almost fall. In the deep part, the horse had to swim and it lost ground, but recovered, just barely, before it was swept away downstream.

  “ ’At’s a son of a bitch in parts,” Sutphen said, when he put his horse back up on the bank. “We’ll have to be mighty careful.”

  “Maybe we should wait another day,” Dag said.

  Flagg shook his head, looking off to the northwest.

  “Nope, we got to get ’em acrost today, Dag. And mighty quick. That storm’s a comin’ and it’ll be a frog strangler. Rain’ll come down like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock.”

  They rode back and Flagg took over, ordering the drovers to turn the herd downriver. At the ford, he told Chavez to pick out two men to send downstream.

  “Two good ropers, Manny. We’re going to have some cows get away from us and I want them to drag ’em out.”

  “What about the little ones?” Chavez asked.

  “We’ll all have to carry those calves across. I don’t want to lose a single one.” He pointed straight up at the sky. Buzzards were gathering like undertakers at a massacre.

  Chavez nodded.

  “You take the lead steer across, Manny, and the rest ought to follow. We may have to whip some of ’em into the river.”

  While Flagg and Dagstaff led the chuck wagon across, holding on to the traces of the mules, the drovers turned the herd, moving them slowly down to the ford. Chavez sent Skip Hughes and Barry Matlee downstream with extra lariats to catch any cattle that washed their way. The wagon made it across at a very slow pace, but rumbled out on the other bank and up onto dry land, then proceeded on to the northwest at a lumbering pace.

  Next, Chavez ordered Jimmy and Little Jake to run the remuda across, watching the progress of the stock and letting the cows watch, as well. The lead steer stood there, its forelegs extended and stiffened, showing Manny that he didn’t want to go anywhere near that rushing water.

  “Ready, Jubal,” Chavez said, when all the horses were across and well out of the way.

  “Dag, you come right on in after I get that lead steer in the water,” Flagg said. “Manny, you and your boys be ready to crowd ’em.”

  When all hands were set, Flagg roped the lead steer, rode into the water, and pulled the steer in as Dag pushed with Firefly from the rear.

  Once the cattle started into the water, those on the shore started bawling. Cows struggled against the current and one started to wash away, regained its footing, and continued on. It took hours to get the herd across and some did get swept downstream. Each drover picked up a calf and carried those across via a slightly different route. Dag carried five calves across himself.

  Cowhands kept crowding the herd so that they became a steady stream fording the swift waters. In the west, the clouds moved closer and the sky overhead became overcast, then began to darken. By the time the entire herd had reached the opposite bank, it was late afternoon and looked like dusk.

  The hands downstream had lost only five head, but they rescued more than a dozen and brought them back, and dragged them over with ropes around the bosses of the longhorns.

  Dag was riding drag with the other late-crossing hands when the first raindrops began to spatter his face.

  Then the temperature dropped sharply, and the wind picked up to a brisk thirty knots, gusting to forty or more. Riders slipped into their slickers and pulled down their hats.

  A few moments later, it started to hail with a sudden ferocity. Pea-sized hailstones pelted Dag and the other riders, stinging their faces, chests, and arms. Then the hailstones grew larger until they were the size of walnuts. It grew sharply colder and the wind howled over the land with whipping and swirling gusts.

  Dag could barely see twenty yards ahead and then his visibility dropped to less than ten feet, then to five. He heard a roar up ahead and the terrible sound of thousands of cattle bawling. He spurred Firefly ahead, ducking to avoid the steady blows of hailstones on his face. He saw, finally, the herd moving away from him in a full run, and out of the corners of his eyes, he saw cattle streaming out of the herd and disappearing into the rain, the hail, and the churned-up mist from the damp ground.

  “Stampede,” Dag yelled, but there was no one to hear him. When he looked around, he saw none of the drag riders. The hailstones grew larger and he was nearly knocked senseless by one the size of a pear that struck him in the head. Another smashed into his cheek, drawing blood where it had cracked the skin.

  Dag lost all sense of direction. He could feel the ground tremble beneath Firefly’s hooves when he stopped and hunkered down to escape the brunt of the wind’s blast and hurtling onslaught of lethal hailstones.

  His heart pounded as the rumbling sound subsided and there was only the clatter of icy balls of hail striking the ground, smashing into rocks. Firefly quivered beneath him, his head hanging low, helpless against the cannonballs that struck his wet hide and staggered him nearly to his knees.

  Dag writhed as each stone struck him, bringing a stinging pain, not only to his flesh, but his bones.

  And worst of all, he thought, he was completely lost, with the precious herd in full stampede.

  Chapter 24

  The ground was white and cold when the hail stopped. Dag saw dead jackrabbits lying here and there, stoned to death by the rocketing hail. Now a steady chill rain fell. Dag pulled his sougan free of its lashing behind the cantle and slipped into it. His was a heavy poncho that he wished he’d had when the storm started. He was cold, shivering, and soaked through to the skin as he started trying to pick up the trail of at least some of the cattle that had scattered to the winds.

  As he rode, without bearings, ducking his head against the slashing rain, Dag saw a dead quail, then another, and the icy hail melting ever so slowly, for the rain was almost as cold as the ice that blanketed the ground. He heard an unearthly sound, and he rode toward it. As he drew closer, he realized it was a calf, and it was bawling at the top of its lungs. He came upon it, saw it standing there, shivering and shaking on wobbly little legs, as forlorn a sight as he’d ever seen.

  The calf did not move when Dag rode up. He dismounted, picked it up in his arms. It struggled feebly as he mounted Firefly, and when he was in the saddle, he pulled the sougan over it to protect it from the rain, keep it warm against his own shivering body. He rode on, blindly, listening for sounds beneath the patter of rain, the heavy sighing of the wind.

  More dead quail. And rabbits. A manzanita bush fractured and smashed, its skeleton filled with balls of hail. Then a roadrunner sprawled out, brained, in a rivulet of water where the hail had melted, its wing and tail feathers rippling from the flow of water. A young antelope limped along, bleating softly, one of its legs broken. It did not run away when Dag rode right up on it. He felt sorry for the small creature. A wolf or a coyote would have it for supper sometime during the night.

  That was the way of nature, he knew. It was not cruel, merely unfeeling, dispassionate. It gave and it took away. It let things be what they would be. It let things happen that would happen without judgment or criticism. He sighed and rode on, coming then upon cows huddling together in clusters or singly, their rumps pointed toward the wind, their heads, with their long sweeping horns, hanging disconsolately. He left them as they were, for he did not know in which direction to drive them and they were not going anywhere for a while.

  He hoped the stampede was over, and he heard nothing to prove that any cattle were still in a mad run, gripped in fear, blind to all but the panic that flowed through a herd at such times like an electric charge.

  A rattlesnake swam ahead of him over the icy ground and the tiny wat
erways, while another lay dead, its head smashed flat, its tail quivering as if life still clung to it in some mysterious way. The quick and the dead, Dag thought, and continued on, looking for the road he had ridden the year before.

  The road loomed before him, an ancient buffalo trail that he knew to be one of the highways of the West. The trail, he thought. And somewhere in the mix of the pattering rain and the slosh of the melting ice, he heard cattle lowing, grumbling deep in their chests and he headed Firefly toward the sound. The calf had settled down and only quivered sporadically, so, his arm nearly numb, he scooted his butt back up the cantle and let the calf gently down on the saddle, between the pommel and his lap, where it draped like some dead furry thing.

  Past dismembered and bleeding cactus he rode, struggling to see through the rain that peppered his face, stung his eyes. A figure loomed up in the silver-sheeted darkness, a man on horseback, dark-cloaked behind a shimmering wall of rain, his horse’s legs enveloped in a fine mist, its hocks spattered with dripping mud.

  “Who’s there?” Dag called, as he approached.

  “That you, Mr. Dagstaff?” It was Skip Hughes, his massive bulk seeming small inside his black slicker, the brim of his hat sogged downward like a wilting flower.

  “Yeah, Skip. That the herd beyond you?”

  Hughes laughed harshly, a wry tone to it that made it humorless.

  “What’s left of it, I reckon. Me’n some of the boys are holding these.”

  “How many?”

  “Maybe a thousand head or so. Hard to tell in this rain. Hell, you can’t see ten feet.”

  Dag looked over a sea of spiked horns sprouting upward like naked trees in a dead forest. Visibility was more like twenty yards, but it was sporadic, as the wind gusted and lashed at them, rattling their raincoats with a tinny tattoo.

  “They got a fire goin’ up ahead,” Hughes said. “Up against a big rock. Chuck wagon’s there, with a broken spoke. Whatcha got under your sougan, Mr. Dagstaff?”

  “Lost calf.”

  “Imagine we might have lost a few of the young ‘uns,” Hughes said.

  Dag said nothing. He rode off into the needling rain and the darkness, following the contours of the bunched herd, passing men on horseback hunched down in their slickers like deformed creatures recently emerged from Dante’s Hell. None of them spoke to him and he did not speak to them.