A Trail Too Far

by Robert Peecher

  "I'm here!" Martha called out as she neared the camp. "Amos! I am here!"

  Relief washed over Amos Cummings as he dashed to his wife and wrapped her in her arms as she came down out of the saddle.

  "Where have you been?" Amos asked. "What were you thinking leaving camp?"

  He looked at the horse, and the two that followed her into the camp.

  "What horses are these?" Amos asked, relieved though he was, he was equally confused. "Is that Rab Sinclair's coat?"

  "Everything is fine, now," Martha said. "Let me catch my breath, and then I will tell you what happened."

  Matthew took the three horses and he picketed them. As he did, he saw Rab Sinclair in the lights at the station house as Rab rode the blue roan into the stable at the station house. Matthew then unsaddled the one horse and rubbed down all three and left them in good spots for grazing. He also filled tin buckets and put them near the horses to water them.

  It took him some time to deal with the horses, and when he returned to the wagons the first light of dawn was showing in the sky above.

  When Matthew walked back into the camp, his mother was still wearing Rab's coat and had just finished telling of her harrowing adventure. She talked around the tearing of her shirt, though she did not spare her family and friends of the terror she felt. She gave the credit of her salvation to the recollection of the memorized verses and the one to whom those pleadings were made. "But Rab Sinclair was the sword and the shield that the Lord sent," Martha said.

  "Where is Rab now?" Amos asked, and Martha and the others all looked around.

  "I am sure he was right behind me, riding with me as we came back to camp," Martha said. "I thought he was here."

  "He rode into the stable at the station house," Matthew said.

  "I should thank him for what he did," Amos said.

  D.B. and Silas Carver walked with Amos back to the station house. Most of those at the camp used their last bit of darkness to try to sleep just a little bit longer, though all three of the Cummings boys stayed awake to keep a watch on the camp.

  D.B. and Silas returned to their rooms in the station house while Amos Cummings walked into the stable. He found Rab Sinclair in one of the stalls, fast asleep on a bed of hay. The blue was in the next stall, also asleep. Amos chose not to disturb them, and he returned to camp.

  Though he crawled into his bedroll, Amos Cummings could not sleep. His mind was filled with visions of his wife's abduction and her torment on the plains, and he felt and overwhelming anger. He wanted to strike out against those men who had abducted his wife. He wanted to punish them. In a way he had never felt before, Amos Cummings wanted revenge.

  18

  Pawnee Bill found Mickey Hogg and Dick Derugy still on the ground where Rab Sinclair had left them tied together. Both men were conscious, though Dick Derugy was still dazed when Pawnee Bill found them.

  "I thought you was just going to try to get a bottle of whiskey and one of them women," Bill said. "What happened?"

  "Get us loose, dammit," Mikey Hogg said.

  "Well ain't you in a foul temper," Pawnee Bill laughed. "Don't tell me you let a woman do this to you. Where's your horses?"

  "Three or four of them jumped us," Mickey Hogg said while Pawnee Bill cut the ropes binding them. "They knocked Dick off his horse and took me at gunpoint. Then they cracked me with a club and tied us up. I come to a little while ago, but Dick's been unconscious until just now."

  "You're lucky I even saw you," Pawnee Bill said, working on the knots on Dick's wrist. He couldn't cut that rope because it was so knotted up that he couldn't work his knife in without cutting Dick's wrists. "Tied Dick up but good. Yep, I come out looking for you at sunup, and I saw some horse tracks in the grass and followed those until I come across you. Looks from the tracks like y'all was walking in circles half the night."

  "Just get us loose," Mickey said. "I'm ready to ride into that camp and kill every last one of 'em now."

  "It wouldn't do to kill 'em this close to the relay station. Or the fort. They's fifty cavalrymen in a fort just down the way." Bill got the rope off of Dick's wrists and rolled him over. The side of his face was swollen and heavily bruised. "Damn, Dick, they knocked hell out of you. How many fingers am I holding up?"

  "Shut up," Dick Derugy said, but his speech was slurred and his eyes seemed to drift aimlessly in their sockets. "Help me get to my feet," he said, but his words sounded like his tongue was too thick for his mouth.

  Pawnee Bill sheathed his knife and held out his hands to help Dick to his feet, but once he was up, Dick was unsteady. He swayed one way and then the other, and Bill helped him to sit back down. "Maybe just set there a bit. Let me untie Mickey."

  With the ropes off him, Mickey cussed a storm and stamped around. His face hurt like the devil, and Pawnee Bill said it looked like his nose was broken.

  "If it ain't broke, it sure did bleed a lot," Bill said.

  Mickey looked around and only saw Pawnee Bill's horse. "You didn't bring us horses?"

  "Last time I saw you, you had three horses and there weren't but two of you. I didn't count on you losing the three you had. I just figured you was lost out here. So they followed you out of camp, huh?"

  "That's right," Mickey said. "We thought they was all asleep when we grabbed the woman, but they must have been awake. Four of them. Maybe it was five. Like I said, they knocked Dick off his horse and he was unconscious the whole time. Then they took me at gun point and bashed me in the face. Must have tied us up and stole our horses."

  "You're lucky they didn't kill you," Pawnee Bill said. "I wonder why they didn't kill you."

  "They'll wish they had," Mickey said. "My head hurts terrible. Let me ride your horse back to camp."

  Pawnee Bill spotted something in the grass. "Here's you shotgun Mickey. And Dick's Colt."

  Mickey started toward Bill's horse.

  "Hold on, now," Pawnee Bill said. "I didn't say you could ride my horse. If anybody's riding that horse besides me, it'll be Dick. Look at him, he don't have enough sense to put one foot in front of the other."

  "I was hit, too," Mickey grumbled.

  "But you can stand up. Take your gun and help me get Dick up on the horse. Our camp ain't far. Y'all was just lost."

  The two men helped Dick Derugy up off the ground and pushed him into the saddle. He wobbled a bit but managed to stay atop the horse.

  Pawnee Bill led the way, with the horse's lead in his hand, and Mickey Hogg walked alongside the horse with a hand on Dick to make sure he didn't fall off. Both men carried a saddle over a shoulder. They walked along for about thirty exhausting minutes in the morning heat when at last they saw the buckboard wagon down in a dry creek bed under some low trees. Chess Bowman was asleep in the shade when they walked up, but the noise they made woke him.

  "Where you been?" Chess asked. "Damn, Mickey! What happened to your face?"

  "Don't you worry about what happened to my face," Mickey Hogg said.

  "Where's your horses?" Chess asked.

  "They was followed when they grabbed the woman," Pawnee Bill said. "A couple of them gave Dick a good smash to the head, and they broke Mickey's nose. Come on over here and help me get Dick down off this horse."

  Chess couldn't take his eyes off Mickey's shattered face.

  "It was more than a couple," Mickey said. "Must have been five or six of them jumped us."

  Pawnee Bill noted that the number of assailants was growing, but he did not comment on it. Bill was angry. He'd been looking forward to getting his hands on a woman, and he didn't care which one of them it was. But Mickey and Dick and managed to foul that up. On their first meeting, Bill had thought Mickey Hogg was a tough man, a real gunfighter who could handle himself. Bill let him take charge of the group. But now he was wondering if Mickey was the real thing or not. Bill wouldn't have let them follow him like that, and he wouldn't have let them sneak up on him.

  "I don't understand how five or six of them followed you and you didn't
know they was there," Chess Bowman said, and Pawnee Bill grinned at the question.

  "It was dark," Mickey said.

  "But how do five or six of them get close enough to bash you in the face and you don't even know they're coming?"

  "It don't matter," Mickey Hogg snapped. "I'm tired of talking about it. I'm going to lay down, but when I get up we need to come up with a plan for how we're going to get at them people."

  "Maybe we ought to leave them alone," Chester Bowman said. "They already been enough trouble for us."

  "I'm going to kill them folks," Mickey Hogg said. "I'm going to kill every one of them. And I'll take whatever they have that I want, and y'all can take whatever you want that they have."

  Pawnee Bill, who had spent time in this area in west Kansas and knew something of the Trail, spoke up.

  "They'll either cross the Arkansas River in the next ten or eleven days and drop down the Jornada, or they'll go on up toward the mountains and cross at Bent's Old Fort. That will take them a week longer, but there's water all the way to Santa Fe."

  "What's the Jornada?" Mickey Hogg asked.

  "That's the shortcut to Santa Fe," Pawnee Bill said. "It takes less time, but there ain't much water. You've got the Cimarron River and everything else is just desert. And after two years of drought, there won't be much water in the Cimarron, if any. If they go on to Bent's Fort, there's water enough, but it takes longer and the going is rough in places. If they go to Bent's Old Fort to cross the Arkansas, we'll catch them for sure."

  "You ever been to Santa Fe?" Mickey Hogg asked.

  "I've been to Bent's Fort, before they burned it from the cholera, but I ain't never been to Santa Fe," Bill said.

  "Which way is that guide going to go?" Mickey asked.

  "He's old enough to remember the Fort if he was in this area," Bill said. "He might go that way if he knows it better. But he's with a bunch of greenhorns, so he might go the Cimarron cutoff because it's easier going. Except for the water."

  Mickey laid out in the grass under the wagon where he would be in the shade, and he put his hat over his face to block out the sun.

  "Whichever way they go is the way we go," Mickey Hogg said.

  "Well then, we'd better hope they go by way of Bent's Fort, because we can't carry enough water to make the Cimarron Trail," Pawnee Bill.

  Mickey snorted. "We'll take what we need from them, so we'll have plenty of water."

  19

  The morning after Martha Cummings' ordeal, everyone in the Cummings party expected to have a day of rest. But Rab Sinclair emerged from the stable after a couple of hours insisting that the teams get hitched to the wagons and the party get moving.

  "We're exhausted, Mr. Sinclair," Amos Cummings argued.

  "The animals are rested well enough, and they'll do most of the work," Rab said. "You being tired is better than you being dead. If we leave out of here now, we might not ever see those men again. If we leave now, push hard through the next few days, we can make the Arkansas crossing in five days. Maybe, with some luck and traveling after dark, we can make the crossing in four days. Then we're eight days, maybe ten depending on the crossing, to the Point of Rocks and the Cimarron River. At that point we're three weeks to Santa Fe. But it's rough going through a dry desert. There are a few springs along the way, but we can't rely on the river. They call it the 'Dry Cimarron' for a reason."

  "Desert? But I thought we were taking the mountain pass," Amos Cummings said.

  "If we go on to the old fort and cross the river there, those men will catch us and they will kill us," Rab Sinclair said. "I beat two of them and tied them up last night. Men like that take a beating as a serious thing. Those men will be intent on paying me back for that. But they'll pay you back, too. They'll kill you and the other men, and when you're dead, they'll have at your women. And when they've done that, then they'll be satisfied that they've washed the stain of last night's humiliation."

  "Do you see what comes of violence, Mr. Sinclair?" Amos Cummings asked. "You have turned these men into mortal enemies."

  Rab Sinclair shook his head in disbelief. "Ask your wife what comes of violence, Mr. Cummings. She found the Lord's salvation in the violence I committed. And I'll say this, if I'd done more violence, those men would be dead and of no threat to anyone, least of all us. Now the best we can do is push on through the desert and hope our water can last as long as we can."

  Rab took his pipe and pouch from his pockets. He filled the bowl and lit the pipe.

  "Mortal enemies?" Rab said. "They was mortal enemies when they took Miss Martha out of this camp."

  Amos Cummings nodded.

  "You're right, of course. And I thank you for what you did to save my wife. I should not chastise you for the means you took to do it. And I'll confess, I have a hatred in my heart for what those men did and what they intended to do. It's taking all I can muster to not want them punished for it."

  "Christian forgiveness is a fine thing, Mr. Cummings," Rab said. "But you can forgive a man who's dead as well as you can forgive one who's alive. Give the order to your people to get them livestock harnessed and them wagon's hitched. Let's get to moving."

  Amos Cummings turned without further argument and went to his sons and Graham Devalt and had them go to roundup the mules and oxen, still picketed near the camp. Then he went to talk with Stuart Bancroft.

  Rab packed his pannier and put it on the buckskin, and he saddled the sorrel. While he saddled the sorrel, Martha Cummings came to see him.

  "I have your coat for you, Mr. Sinclair," she said, holding it out to him.

  "Thank you, ma'am," Rab said. "I hope you're recovered this morning."

  "I am quite all right, thanks to you. You have my deepest gratitude."

  "Your husband has a quarrel with the way in which I subdued those men. I reckon he don't care for bashing in a man's head any more than he does for shootings and stabbings."

  "My husband is very committed to his beliefs," Martha Cummings said. "Recent events have tested some of his commitment."

  "And you?"

  Martha smiled. "I have no quarrel with the way in which you subdued those men. And you stopped short of killing them when I asked you to."

  "I hope we don't come to regret that," Rab said.

  "I hope so, as well," Martha said. "And now I have another request for you."

  Rab looked up into Martha's pretty face. He liked talking to her, and he couldn't see refusing a request. If Amos Cummings was looking to argue about traveling the Jornada, he could not have sent a better pleader.

  "What request is that?" Rab asked, his tone full of suspicion.

  "Would you mind terribly if Rachel rode along beside you today?"

  "Mounted?" Rab asked.

  "Yes, on one of our saddle horses, of course."

  "It's a rough way to spend a whole day for those unaccustomed to it. I reckon she could get down and walk or ride on the wagon if she found it too uncomfortable. I suppose I don't see a problem with it."

  "I'm making the request on Rachel's behalf," Martha said. "I believe that she feels bad about the way she treated you the other evening, and she would like to make amends. Or if not make amends, at least show you that she can be pleasant."

  Rab shrugged a shoulder. "The way she treated me?" he asked. "I didn't notice nothing that would cause her to have to make amends."

  Martha smiled and nodded. "No, Mr. Sinclair. I suspect it is true that you did not. You're not the sort of man who worries about words much, are you?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Well, all the same, Rachel would like to ride with you today."

  "She's welcome," Rab said.

  As the wagons started out along the trail, Rab Sinclair with Rachel Cummings at his side rode to the station house. Rab went inside where he spoke to D.B. and Silas Carver, and Rachel went with him.

  "These three horses I took from those men last night, I'm leaving them in your stable," Rab said.

  "We'll put 'em to good
use," D.B. said.

  "Y'all want to be careful of those men," Rab said. "I reckon they're dangerous, and maybe not above causing trouble here at the station house. I'd be reluctant, if I was you, to try to take them on. They come looking for them hawsses, don't you hesitate to give them. The saddle from the hawss the woman rode in is in there, too. If they come looking for them, like I said, just give them over."

  "We'll be careful," Silas said. "I expect they're more interested in you than they are in two old station masters."

  "Maybe," Rab said.

  "Which way are you planning to go, Rabbie?" Silas asked. "You taking the mountain pass or going across the Jornada? I'll remind you, we ain't had much for rain for two years. Long drought, the Cimarron might be running dry."

  "Oh, we'll go the mountain pass," Rab said.

  It was not true. Rab had already decided to take the wagon train through the desert. But he didn't mind misleading D.B. and Silas. If Mickey Hogg and his gang came into the station house looking for the Cummings party, as they likely would, Rab couldn't trust D.B. or Silas not to mention which route he intended to take. Rab didn't think they'd mention it out of malice, but neither man was known for always thinking carefully. They might get to rambling and say too much. So Rab wanted to make sure that if they said too much, they didn't also know too much.

  "What's your opinion, Rabbie," D.B. said. "These murders back east near Council Grove – the folks at the farm and the farmer with the wagon – you think these men did all that and made it look like Injuns?"

  "There's no way I could know that, D.B.," Rab said. "How do they know it was Injuns?"

  "They found a Cheyenne knife at the farmhouse."

  "Was it a good knife?" Rab asked.

  "Well I don't know that," D.B. said. "I ain't seen it."

  Rab took off his hat and scratched at his head.

  "I've spent some time among the Cheyenne," he said. "I've known them to do some awful things to their enemies, and murder sure ain't beyond what they're capable of. What I've never known was for one of 'em to leave a good knife behind. When the soldiers get back to the fort, you ask them if it was a good knife. If it was, then you'll have your answer."