“No graves, right?”
“No graves. Storm scare cattle. Some cattle run. Hands get back. Then herd walk north. Slow.”
“Let’s ride on, then, Joe. If you see signs of any trouble, let me know.”
Joe nodded.
The two rode on under a gray sky. They followed the tracks of the herd, but stayed on the left flank. The ground where the cattle had passed was churned up, muddy, and there were many cow pies and horse apples strewn along the herd’s path.
Their clothes were drying out in the light breeze and the clouds were thinning. The sun rose above them, so they had shade. Dane knew that they had gone through a violent storm. He and Joe had been aroused by the heavy thunder and both saw the lightning. Dane knew that it was a prime situation for a stampede and worried most of the night.
He felt relieved that only a few head of cattle had run off from the herd and that Paddy and his men had gotten them all back. They saw no stray cows and no dead ones. So he had worried needlessly.
“Tracks fresh,” Joe said after they had ridden more than an hour.
“How fresh?” Dane asked.
“Three hour.”
“We should catch up to them by noon, then.”
“Cattle move slow. Noon maybe.”
The sun climbed and the clouds began to break up and leak shafts of sunlight. They saw a few jackrabbits, and off in the distance, a red fox scampered over the puddles and mud mounds. Bobwhite quail flushed and took flight, and a red-tailed hawk floated over the rain-soaked land, riding the wind currents high above them.
Snakes slithered across their path and they heard a warning rattle, but never saw the serpent. The horses sidled away from the sound, their heads held high, their eyes bulging, ears twitching.
Joe scanned the countryside and still looked down at the ground to read sign. They rode at a walk for a half hour, then trotted for a half hour and ran for about fifteen minutes at a fair gallop.
Dane saw a bleak and empty landscape, places that had been flattened smooth by small flash floods, and belts of mud that had been piled up during the storm. He could smell the sharp tang of urine and the musky aroma of the fresh cow pies and horse droppings. He felt at home in a strange land.
Around noon, the tracks grew even fresher. Even Dane could see the sharp edges of the tracks left in the mud by the cloven hooves of the cattle and the inverted U’s that the horses left preserved in drying mud.
“Soon,” Joe said.
They rode in silence as the sun reached its zenith and began to beat down on them. Joe stood up in the stirrups to look farther ahead of them every so often.
The scent of cattle grew stronger by the minute.
Then, in the distance, they heard the unmistakable sound of wagon wheels. Soon they both caught sight of the lumbering chuck wagon. It swayed on its frame and the wheels spat out clods of mud and splashed water as it ran through small puddles of water.
The wagon increased in size as they gained on it. Well ahead of the chuck wagon and the supply wagon, they saw the horses in the remuda. And fifteen minutes later, they saw the tail end of the herd with a rider on drag.
“Me smell river,” Joe said. He pointed ahead of them as they continued to walk their horses now that the herd was in sight.
Dane sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything but mud and cow shit,” he said. The breeze had shifted and was striking them in their faces.
“Cattle move fast,” Joe said. “Cows smell river.”
It was true. The cattle broke into a trot and surged forward ahead of the wagons and the remuda.
“Let’s catch up to ’em,” Dane said.
Joe spurred his horse to a trot and Dane followed. They began to close the distance.
Then they both reined up fast as they heard the distinct crack of a rifle.
Joe turned his head in the direction of the shot.
So did Dane.
They saw nothing but empty plain.
Seconds later, they heard a man shouting, but could not make out any of his words.
“Come on, Joe. Nobody on the drive should be shooting.”
“Shot come from west,” Joe said. He stretched out his arm and pointed to the left.
“You see anybody, Joe?” Dane asked.
“No see,” Joe said.
But he kept looking. They spurred their horses again and rode on. Men shouted and they saw riders dashing along the left flank of the herd.
Joe stood up in his stirrups as his horse galloped ahead.
Dane kept looking off to his left every other second.
Then Joe broke away just as Dane saw the tiny figure of a man carrying a rifle. He was running and then disappeared behind a low hill. Moments later, they saw a rider atop a horse. The horse was running fast, away from the herd.
“Can you catch him, Joe?” Dane asked.
“Me catch,” Joe said, and turned his horse. He galloped toward the retreating man while Dane rode on. As Dane came up on the herd’s left flank, he saw men light down from their horses. They stood around something on the ground that he could not see.
His heart seemed to sink into his stomach. There was a flutter of winged insects in his belly. He knew what the men were looking at there on the ground.
Another dead cowhand.
Bushwhacked, he thought, and looked in Joe’s direction. The rider he was chasing had disappeared, but Joe was hunched over the saddle horn, flying like the wind.
The men looked up as Dane approached.
“Who is it?” Dane asked.
Paddy stepped out and his face was grim. “Lester,” he said. “Lester Pierson.”
Dane swung out of the saddle as Reno came to a skidding stop. He looked down at the man on the ground.
“Dead?” he asked.
“Stone dead,” Paddy said sadly. “That Joe ridin’ off?”
“Yeah. We saw the bushwhacker, Paddy.”
“I hope Joe puts a bullet in him,” Paddy said.
“I hope he cuts off his balls,” Whit Hawkins said. “Lester was a pard of mine.”
Dane said nothing. He looked down at the body of Lester, and his stomach twisted into a knot. There was a hole in Lester’s left side and a large pool of blood beneath his armpit. The blood rippled in the breeze and began to soak into the damp ground.
“That’s the third man Concho has kilt, Dane,” Paddy said.
“I know,” Dane said. “Joe and I saw the other graves.”
He turned away as bile rose in his throat. He gulped in air, but his knees turned to jelly. He hoped Joe caught up with the killer. He wished he could be there to help him.
He turned around. The men all stared at him, perplexed and questioning looks on their faces. If they had asked him anything, he would not have been able to answer. Death was an ugly thing and especially when it happened to a friend.
There were no answers yet.
There were only questions and the fear of the unknown.
Chapter 37
Mitch tied his horse to a clump of bushes behind a small hillock once he saw the herd.
He walked to a good vantage point and lay flat. He measured the distance to one of the flanking riders. He jacked a shell into the chamber and sighted his rifle, allowing for windage and trajectory. Like Concho, he had sighted his Winchester in at twenty-five yards and knew the drop would be perfect at a hundred yards.
He figured the rider he had targeted was a little more than a hundred yards away most of the time.
He didn’t look at anyone else. Just that one rider on the flank, who was riding back and forth on an invisible line to show the cows that he was there and they shouldn’t try to bolt from the herd.
Mitch waited until the rider turned his horse and paused for a minute. He cocked his rifle, held his breath. He aimed for the head, expecting the bullet drop would hit a vital region. If he was right on, then the bullet would blow the man’s head apart.
He squeezed the trigger. The rifle exploded fire and a lead pro
jectile from the muzzle. The stock rammed against Mitch’s shoulder. Smoke filled the air until the breeze shredded it into cobwebby wisps.
He saw the rider twitch when the bullet struck him in the chest, just below his left shoulder. The man toppled from his horse and hit the ground with a thud.
Mitch did not wait to see any more. He knew the rider was dying if he was not already dead. The bullet probably collapsed his left lung and ripped through his heart.
Mitch ran to his horse. He ejected the spent cartridge on the fly. Then he mounted up and put the horse into a gallop. He did not look back for an eighth of a mile.
When he did turn around, he saw two riders coming up on the rear of the herd. One of them pointed in his direction, then turned his horse to give chase.
Mitch slapped the ends of his reins on his horse’s rump and jabbed him in the flanks with his spurs. The horse increased its speed, its head outstretched, its mane flying in the wind.
“Come on, boy,” he yelled into the horse’s ear. “Give it all you got.”
He slid his rifle back in its sheath and turned around again. The rider was still far back, but he was coming after him at full speed.
Mitch lay almost flat to cut down on wind resistance and felt the horse eating up ground.
He did not look back again. He was into gently rolling country now and his horse was running well. He knew he could not keep running at this speed, but he also knew that the rider who had come after him would soon see his own horse falter.
Long strings of yellow lather blew back and struck Mitch’s legs. He slowed the horse, not wanting it to founder.
He looked back. The rider chasing him was stopped. He began to shrink as his own horse slowed to a walk.
“Close call,” Mitch said to himself.
He was breathing hard and his horse was wheezing. He stopped and let the animal blow. When he looked back, he saw no one on his trail.
“Tough luck, feller,” he said aloud, and his mouth bent in a smirk of satisfaction. He had done what he came to do. Now there was another notch to put on his rifle stock.
He walked his horse until its breathing returned to normal. He kept looking back until he turned north. He followed the tracks of Concho and the others. There was no hurry now. He would catch up and tell of his deed and get a few slaps on his back and maybe a slug of whiskey.
The clouds were thinning overhead and breaking up. Columns of sunlight broke through and lit patches of green grass and shone on small pools of water. It felt as if he were riding through an open-air chapel and that the light was shining through stained glass windows.
He dug out the makings and rolled a cigarette.
No one was following him.
He felt as if he owned the ground he was on and all the empty land around him.
Chapter 38
Pete and Whit were hard at it, wielding shovels for the grave where Lester would be buried.
Paddy had halted the herd, and the other outriders were keeping it in check while Dane and Paddy talked.
Dane was satisfied that Lester had not suffered.
“The bullet grazed his arm before it tore into his chest and blew his heart to pieces,” Dane said after inspecting Lester’s wound. He had not lost much blood because his heart had stopped pumping almost immediately after he’d been shot. “Bullet smashed through his right lung and came out through his right rib cage.”
“You’d make a good coroner, Dane,” Paddy said.
They stood a few feet away from the diggers and kept their voices low out of respect for the dead.
“I saw enough gunshot wounds when we fought the Yankees down in Texas at the end of the war. War was over, but we didn’t know it. A couple of my friends got shot in just about the same place. I stood next to the surgeon who poked around in one of the men’s chests. It’s something you never forget.”
“You must have been real young then,” Paddy said.
“I was fifteen. Told everybody I was eighteen. I got my belly full of war in a real short time.”
“I was at Vicksburg,” Paddy said. “You ain’t seen nothin’ until you see what grapeshot can do to a man.”
“I can imagine,” Dane said. “But men die from most anything that comes at the end of explodin’ powder, tacks, nails, dimes, pennies, ball bearings.”
“You got that right.”
As the men were shoveling dirt from the six-foot-long hole, Dane looked up and saw Joe Eagle riding back toward them. “Here comes Joe,” he said.
Paddy looked in the same direction.
“Looks like he don’t have no scalp hangin’ from his belt,” Paddy said.
“Joe wouldn’t scalp anyone,” Dane said.
“I was just jokin’.”
They waited for Joe to ride up. Dane could tell from the expression on his face that he hadn’t caught up to the bushwhacker.
“Him get away,” Joe said. “Too far.”
“Did you recognize him from town, Joe?” Dane asked.
“Too far. No see face. Fast horse.”
“Light down, then,” Dane said. “The hands have the herd under control.”
Joe slid out of the saddle. His face shone with sweat and there were strands of foam on his horse’s chest. He rubbed the gelding dry with the palm of his hands. He spoke soothing words to the horse as he patted him on the neck.
“Say, Joe,” Paddy said. “What do you call your horse anyways?”
“Swoghili,” Joe said.
“Swog what?” Paddy said.
“Cherokee word. Mean horse.”
Dane laughed as Paddy gulped.
“You don’t want to know what he calls you in Cherokee, Paddy,” Dane said.
“No, I reckon I don’t. I don’t savvy Cherokee no way.”
Joe walked away, leading his horse. He would walk him until the horse was fully recovered from the hard run.
“How deep, Paddy?” Pete asked.
“Two foot ought to do it,” Paddy said. “I want to get this herd up to the Caney before sundown.”
“We got about a half foot to go,” Whit said, and the two men continued to dig down into the earth and pile dirt next to the grave.
“There’s no hurry, Paddy,” Dane said. “When we make the Caney, I want to hold the herd until Len Crowell catches up to us.”
“How far behind is he, do you reckon?” Paddy asked.
“Maybe a day, day and a half.”
“You lose any men on the ride?”
Dane shook his head. “No. I don’t know what Concho’s got on his mind exactly, but it looks to me like he’s thinning you down, Paddy, before he jumps the whole bunch of you.”
“That’s the only thing I can figger. He’ll pare us down to just a few men and then jump us somewhere. God knows where.”
“Maybe he’s waiting until you run the herd over the border into Kansas.”
“Why?”
“My hunch is that Throckmorton wants these cattle rustled a long ways from Shawnee Mission. A way of keepin’ his hands clean, you might say.”
“I don’t see that it makes much difference. Oklahoma or Kansas seems about the same to me right now.”
“Out of sight, out of mind,” Dane said.
Paddy tilted his hat back off his forehead and scratched a patch of hair above his left ear. “You think maybe Throckmorton’s countin’ on having folks think we was rustled by Kansas jayhawks instead of Oklahoma Sooners?”
“Maybe,” Dane said. “You got to think like Throckmorton. He’s as devious as a Texas sidewinder. And now I got to think like Concho.”
“How do you think like Concho?” Paddy asked.
“It’s hard, but from what I’ve heard about the bastard and the way he’s attacking your hands, makes me think he’s a damned coward, deep down.”
“What makes you think he’s a coward, Dane?”
“He’s a back-shooter and a dry-gulcher. His tactics with you prove me right. His reputation proves it even more. A man who is not a coward
doesn’t sneak up on a defenseless man and shoot him dead. That’s the coward’s way. He never risks his own life. He only takes the lives of others.”
“You may be right,” Paddy said.
“If a man like Concho has a disagreement with someone, say at a saloon, or anywhere, he doesn’t call the man out to his face. Instead, he waits until dark and then continues the argument with a six-gun, a bullet in the back of the head resolves the disagreement and Concho walks away the winner in his mind.”
“Well, he’s right dangerous, that’s for sure. I’m feelin’ real bad at losin’ men when I can’t even fight back.”
“Well, Paddy, you are going to fight back. We all are. That’s why I want to wait for the rest of the cattle to catch up to us. We’ll have more guns and we’ll probably outnumber Concho and his band of outlaws.”
“But Concho don’t fight fair, Dane.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Dane said. “And neither will we.”
“How you gonna beat Concho, even with more guns?”
“I’ll let you know when the time comes, Paddy. I’m still studying on it. In a way, my plan depends on thinking like Concho and knowing where he will strike next.”
“You ain’t no mind reader, Dane.”
“No, Paddy, I’m not. And neither is Concho. But I’m a man reader and I know he’s going to pick the best place to jump us, someplace where we can’t run and can’t hide.”
“Where might that be, Dane?”
Dane chuckled. “You ask too many questions, Paddy. I have a good idea where Concho will hit us, and you’ll recognize it when we come to it.”
“You know, Dane, sometimes you’re so damned mysterious, nobody can figger you out.”
“I get that from my daddy. He’s so full of secrets he has to keep his cane handy to beat ’em back from leakin’ out of him.”
“I always thought your pappy was real open and honest, Dane.”
“Oh, he is, Paddy. But he’s good at keepin’ secrets too.”
“Hmm. Well, I guess you know him best.”
“I’m his son, Paddy. A son gets to know his father. It might take a lifetime, but I’m gettin’ smarter about him by the day.”
The Omaha Trail Page 21