A Trail Too Far

by Robert Peecher

  "They are vile men, aren't they," Rachel said.

  "They sure are, Miss Rachel. Vile and dangerous."

  "Would you fight them to protect us?" Rachel asked.

  "I reckon I would," Rab said. "I signed on as your guide to get you to Santa Fe. I'm bound to do that. If those men come after you, I'd have no choice."

  "My brothers would help you," Rachel said, dropping her voice and glancing back at the wagons. "And Uncle Stuart, too. My father is opposed to violence, but Uncle Stuart was talking to my mother in camp this morning. He said to her it would be better to defend ourselves than to continue to push the animals so hard. And I know my brothers would fight."

  "That's good to know," Rab said.

  Rachel glanced back to the wagons again. Then she leaned forward on her horse so that she would be closer to Rab. And she spoke quietly. "You would kill those men to protect me, wouldn't you?"

  Rab puffed his pipe. With the tip clenched in his teeth he said, "Miss Rachel, I reckon to protect you I'd kill just about everybody."

  Rachel smiled. "I will fight, also."

  "If it comes to that, you might have to," Rab said.

  "We have hunting rifles in the wagons. They are old guns, but they shoot fine."

  "Have you ever shot one of those rifles?" Rab asked.

  Rachel laughed. "No, Rabbie, I've never shot one."

  Rab reached into his saddle bag and drew out a long hunting knife in a scabbard.

  "You put this on your belt," he said. "That will do you better than a hunting rifle. This is the weapon that would be most likely save your life if it came to that."

  Rachel held the knife and in her hands for a long time, looking at it.

  "I don't know if I could use this on a person," she said.

  Rab nodded at her, puffing on his pipe.

  "It's a hard thing to take a man's life," Rab said. "It's hard to do because he's fighting to keep it. So you have to be stronger or faster or smarter than he is. So the task itself is a hard thing. But it's also hard because your heart tells you it's wrong to kill a man. But you have to push those feelings away, and you don't have time to think it through when the time comes. Because you have to be faster and smarter to win that fight. You can't wait to think about it. The only way that knife will do you any good, Rachel, is if you decide right now that your life is more valuable to you than his life. You have to decide right now that you'll do anything to stay alive. Including shoving that knife into his throat, or through his eye."

  "Rabbie, don't," Rachel said, frowning in disgust. "Don't say such things."

  "I am going to say such things, Rachel," Rab said.

  He looked over his shoulder to see the wagons still off in the distance.

  "I'm going to say such things because I want to tell you something else. Your life is important to me. I don't know how to pick out the words. Maybe this is where I could do with some book learning. Maybe if I could read poems I'd have some way of saying what I think. But you make me feel this way, and I don't know how to put a name to it. You make me feel sad and happy all at the same time. I look at you, and I just want to hold you up close to me and smell your hair. I don't even care what we're talking about, I just want to talk to you. But then it makes me sad because I realize this ain't going on forever. These last few days, riding side by side with you. I reckon I'd be happy if this trip to Santa Fe took another hundred years, because I don't want it to end. I know how stiff and sore it makes you, riding all day. But here you are, and I think you're doing it just to ride along beside me. And I'd like to have you riding along beside me every day. Not just on this trip, but every day from now until forever. I don't want to ever be without you. That's how I feel about you, and I wish I knew a better way to say it."

  Rachel blushed, and then she smiled at his sincerity. And then she wiped away a tear that had come unbidden to her eye.

  "Oh, Rabbie Sinclair. I think you could teach the poets a thing or two. I feel the same way. We just ride along together and talk about everything, and you know so much about this world that I have never even guessed at. And I can't even bear to think of Santa Fe, because I know that in Santa Fe we will be leaving and you will be staying. And I just want to stay with you. And my heart hurts when I think about leaving you to go to California. It seems absurd to even say it, but I've been wondering if maybe when we get to Santa Fe the right thing wouldn't be for me to stay with you and say goodbye to my family instead of the other way round. That's what my heart wants. But Graham says it could never work because you are so different from me, but it's those differences that make me feel so drawn to you."

  Rab nodded and blew out a small cloud of smoke.

  "Either way, that's why I say to you the things you don't want me to say," Rab said. "The eyes or the throat. But if you can't get to the eyes or the throat, under the ribs with an upward thrust. The stomach, and you twist the knife. But you don't stab a man and turn loose of the knife. You hold onto it and you jerk it out and you give it to him again."

  "Please don't say it," Rachel said.

  "Over and over, until the fight is gone out of him. You stab him everywhere you can, over and over until you've taken what he fought to hold onto. And you decide now that you're strong enough to do that."

  "What if he's made the same decision?" Rachel asked.

  "He ain't even thought about it, because he has no qualms about killing you. He'll do it. So he's never thought about any of it. And when the time comes, he won't be thinking about it. He'll just be fighting. So you've got to meet him there and fight, too. Your life has to be more important to you than his life is to him. And if you make that decision now, you won't have to think about it when the times comes."

  Rachel Cummings nodded as she slid the knife's scabbard onto her belt.

  "Before the wagons get here, I'd like to say a word more about Santa Fe," Rab said. "It may be that you don't have to go on from Santa Fe. Not if you don't want to."

  Before Rachel could answer, the livestock came up around them, and Matthew Cummings rode up behind the animals.

  22

  When the last of the wagons was across the Arkansas, the Cummings party set about the work of getting water. With two years of drought, the river ran no higher than Rab's thigh, and the wagons did not have to float across. But the bottom was rough and uneven, and the oxen had to be coerced to keep the wagons moving so that they were not stuck.

  The chore of getting water was arduous. The wagons were stopped up beyond the low bank, so the casks had to be carried down to the water. The sand was loose and difficult to maneuver with full casks. The casks that still had water had to be combined to keep the water from the Arkansas separated from the better spring water they still had. Then the casks had to be filled in the river, hefted back up the bank and lashed to the sides of the wagons. The sun beat down on the Cummings party, and the boys and men engaged in filling the casks baked in the heat. Graham Devalt took ill and had to rest in the shade under a wagon. Jeremiah and Matthew, who both had taken readily to the hard work of the trip, several times had to sit and rest after toting each cask from the river to the wagons.

  The river was low, which made for easy crossing, but it left the water smelling and tasting like soil.

  "It's a shame we can't find a spring," Stuart Bancroft remarked to Amos. "Ground water always has a better taste than river water."

  Rab Sinclair heard the comment.

  "Mr. Bancroft, soon enough you'll be glad to get what you have and wish for more," he said.

  "Is the desert route the best way for us to go?" Stuart asked. "I realize the mountain pass would take longer, and the terrain would be rougher going, but we don't have to worry about suffering from lack of water or losing the animals. They are already exhausted from how hard we have pushed these last few days, and now we are asking them to cross a desert."

  While they went about the task of collecting water, the livestock was all turned out. Able to rest or roam and graze at will. Rab had conc
erns about how the animals would hold up. What Stuart Bancroft said was accurate – the animals had been pushed too hard, and now that the wagon train had crossed the Arkansas and would be entering the Cimarron Desert, the going would get worse for those animals. Rab had learned in his life that a man who depended on animals was wise to treat them better than he treated himself. In a bad spot, a horse would get a drink of water and a man would get only a sip.

  The spare animals had been a great help to keep the wagon train moving day and night these last few days, but they would soon be a burden. Spare animals drank just as much water as those harnessed to the wagons, and a rest would not replenish a thirsty animal.

  Rab chewed on Stuart Bancroft's question for a few moments. It was the same question he'd asked himself over and over for the last few days, and now the question had to be answered once and for all.

  "We'll be thirsty if we drop south here and travel through the desert," Rab said. "But if we keep going on the other side of the Arkansas and try for the mountain pass, I believe we'll have to kill those men following us, or die trying. What's important for you to remember, Mr. Bancroft, even if Mr. Cummings was to relinquish his demand that we not fight those men – what's important is that those men are killers. In the last couple of months they've slaughtered a family and they've killed a farmer. Who knows what else they've done?"

  "Are you sure they were the ones who did those things?" Amos asked.

  "I wasn't there to see it happen, but I'm sure. I've looked at the supplies in that buckboard wagon. They've got supplies to get through the winter, not supplies to go to Santa Fe. If it was Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, we would have heard of more attacks. Dog Soldiers don't kill a family and disappear. They spread terror."

  Rab looked back at the Arkansas and across it as far as he could see. Mickey Hogg and his party were not yet there, but Rab knew they soon would be.

  "Those men are killers. At least a couple of them have probably killed free-staters over in Lawrence. So even if we decided to make a stand against them, what they have on their side is that they know they can kill. They know that they don't have any second thoughts or hesitation about it. Can the same be said about us? I think the wise strategy for us is to get ahead of these men in the desert. We may lose some animals taking the Cimarron cut. That's a fact. But those men can't follow us through the desert. They ain't equipped for it. They can't carry the water they need. I've seen their wagon. They have only one cask for water. And they've got a herd of stolen hawsses they'll have to water, or turn loose. They ain't smart men, but they're smart enough to see that. They will not follow us this way. But if we make for the mountain pass, they'll follow us. They'll catch us. And they'll fight us. And then we have to trust that we can kill easier and better than them."

  "And we probably cannot do that," Stuart Bancroft said. "We're not those kind of people."

  Rab nodded his head in solemn agreement.

  Stuart looked south. Even here from the river valley, he could already see that the terrain turned more hostile in appearance. The luscious green grass of the prairie was replaced here by a shorter, drier looking grass. Patches of brown sand showed between short sagebrush. Even with a lack of rain, the prairie through which they had been traveling still was a never ending ocean of waves of grass. But south of the Arkansas, the short grass of the high plains showed the lack of rain.

  "Are we those people who can manage to cross a desert?" Stuart asked.

  Rab grinned at him. "There is only one way to find out, Mr. Bancroft."

  Amos Cummings looked up at the sun in the sky. They had started the crossing at first light, but it was already late in the afternoon.

  "Shall we make camp here tonight?" Amos asked.

  "No," Rab said. "Once those casks are all full, we should get on the way."

  "We've pushed so hard," Amos said. "Surely before we start across the desert we should stay by the river one more night."

  "We should," Rab agreed. "But if we do, I believe we will wake with knives at our throats."

  "It is too much that we should be so harassed by these men," Stuart Bancroft said. "Amos, we should make a stand."

  Surprised by the suggestion, Rab looked from one man to the other, interested to hear what Amos Cummings would say.

  "You know I cannot do that," Amos said.

  Stuart shook his head in disgust. "Even to protect our families, you will not raise a fist?"

  "Thou shalt not kill," Amos Cummings said. "How can I trust in the Lord's Word and His protection but be unwilling to submit to His commands? The Mosaic Law tells me that God's will is that I should not strike down another man. And I will not. Nor will I sanction killing in my name. Our entire purpose in this journey is to protect our children from what we both agree will be war. To keep them out of such a thing, because we both believe that such a thing is wrong. How heavy would it sit upon my conscience to be responsible for the killing of four men because I wanted to flee killing?"

  "But killing to save your family?" Stuart asked, and his tone was almost a plea.

  "Killing in Ohio is a sin," Amos said. "It is no less a sin just because we have crossed the Missouri River."

  "These Western territories is sinful places, Mr. Cummings," Rab Sinclair said. He did not wait for an answer. He turned around to see about the filling and loading of the last casks.

  When the casks were finally full and loaded, Rab etched markings into the casks still full of spring water.

  "This is what we'll drink," he said, making the announcement generally to all of the travelers. "We can leave the water from the river for the animals. If we run out of the good spring water, we'll turn to the river water. Your instinct will be to drink, and to drink lots. But we will have to ration the supply we have to make it last as long as possible."

  Here, going through the section of the Trail known as the Jornada, the ruts that served as a guide were harder to find. Wagon wheels did not cut so easily into dry, baked earth, and fewer travelers had come this way.

  Rab and the Cummings boys all rounded up the livestock while Amos and Stuart harnessed the teams and hitched them to the wagons.

  They were losing daylight, but Rab wanted to get as far from the river as possible. He was sure that if Mickey Hogg and his group did not arrive to the river by sundown they would be there at sunup.

  As the wagons started to roll out and Matthew Cummings began to push the weary livestock forward, Rab, mounted on the sorrel, rode up to him.

  "You lead the way through the rest of the afternoon," Rab said. "Set your path just a little south of the sun, and set a pace that won't too much labor the animals. At dusk, call for a halt and make camp."

  "What are you going to do?" Matthew asked.

  "I need to see to one last thing. If something happens and I do not rejoin the party, you should not try to cross the desert without me. It would be too easy to lose your way. In the morning, at sunup, break camp without me and keep traveling in the same direction you're going this afternoon. You know how to set the falling tongue of the lead wagon to be sure you start in the right direction?"

  "I do, Rab," Matthew said.

  "If I have not joined you by tomorrow at dusk, turn your wagons north and find the Arkansas River again. Follow it west until you find a crossing. Then cross it and go north until you find the trail. Then follow that west. There ain't any relay stations on the Cimarron cut, but you'll come to a relay station on the mountain route. There, your pa can decide if he wants to keep going or if he wants to turn around and go back east."

  Matthew stared at Rab. "But what are you going to do?"

  "Don't worry about that," Rab said. "I have one last chore to take care of before we can cut across this desert. If I don't show back up, you take good care of my blue hawss."

  "I will," Matthew promised.

  "Now, you understand what to do, right?"

  "Follow the sun today. Camp at dusk. Set the falling tongue to find my direction in the morning. Follow the same dire
ction tomorrow. If you don't catch up to us, turn north and find the river. Follow the river west. Find a crossing. Find the trail. And then go to a relay station."

  Rab smiled at him. "That's it. You're the guide now, Matthew. This is no place to get lost, so don't forget any of it."

  Rab started to wheel the sorrel, but Rachel Cummings came riding up to him, a big smile on her face.

  "I feel better already, knowing we're across the Arkansas," she said.

  "Good," Rab said. "Help your brother keep these animals moving until sundown. I'll join you again tomorrow."

  "What are you going to do?" Rachel asked, her brow wrinkling to concern.

  "I've got a chore to take care of," Rab said. "I want to make certain those men do not try to follow us."

  "Rab, what are you going to do?" she asked again.

  "Just going to watch for them and make sure they don't try to cross here," Rab said.

  23

  Mickey Hogg and Pawnee Bill stood on the sandy bank of the Arkansas River looking at the tracks cut by the six wagons.

  "They crossed here for sure," Pawnee Bill said.

  "It ain't much of a river," Mickey said. "I thought the Arkansas was supposed to be a big river for steamboats."

  "It is farther east of here," Pawnee Bill said. He wasn't sure why, but he felt defensive about the river. He knew that Mickey considered him an authority on this part of the country, and he felt like Mickey's criticism of the river was directed at him personally.

  Since they'd got the whiskey from the stagecoach station, Mickey was hard to get along with. He drank too much in the evenings and was irritable in the mornings.

  Dick Derugy was still in the back of the buckboard wagon. He complained that any time he tried to stand he went dizzy, and he said he had a fog floating in front of his eyes all the time. He'd never been much of a thinker, but Pawnee Bill was certain that when Rab Sinclair hit him he must have broken something in Dick's head.