A Trail Too Far

by Robert Peecher

  Chester Bowman had gone to complaining. He didn't like driving the wagon, and he thought they should turn around. They were all hungry and regretting that they'd not stolen some provisions from the stagecoach station. Mickey was keeping all the whiskey for himself so that Pawnee Bill and Chester had nearly been shot to no benefit.

  And now they were fixing to try a desert crossing. Bill had never been on the Jornada before, but he knew that here was the place where Jedidiah Smith was killed. He'd heard stories of men being stranded in snow storms and others dying of thirst with the blazing desert sun baking them. This was no place that Pawnee Bill wanted to find himself, no matter how much he wanted to get his hands on those women.

  But Mickey could not be deterred, and Bill was scared to again broach the subject of turning back.

  "Let's get moving," Mickey said. "Them folks ain't gettin' any closer with us standing here looking at the river."

  Chester was up on high ground away from the river bed, sitting in the shadow of the wagon. "Come on, Chess!" Bill called to him. "Let's get across. You can drive that wagon through."

  Mickey and Bill drove the horses down into the water and followed them with Chester coming into the river just behind them. The buckboard wasn't made for crossing a river like this, and it didn't sit up as high as the prairie schooners the Cummings drove, so the back was going to get wet. Chess lifted the bags of flour up to his bench seat where they would stay dry. Dick Derugy, who wasn't stirring much regardless of bumps or jolts, was going to be wet in the back of the wagon. There was nothing Chester could do about that.

  The spare horses came out the southern bank. Chester was poised with the front wheels just starting to get wet. Mickey and Pawnee Bill were out in the middle of the river, holding their boots aloft to keep them dry.

  And that's where they all were when a thunderous boom cracked out and echoed, and a lead ball splattered into the water just between Mickey and Pawnee Bill.

  The shot startled all three men, and both Mickey and Bill dropped their feet into the river.

  Mickey's shotgun on its swivel rig was of no use to him mounted, but Pawnee Bill and Chester both drew their Colt Dragoons.

  To make the shot, Rab Sinclair had stepped out from behind some scrub brush on the south bank of the river.

  "Just wanted to make certain I had your attention," Rab said. He smiled a friendly smile, but he was reloading the Hawken rifle as he spoke. He was not concerned about the guns pointing at him. He had faith that neither Pawnee Bill nor Chess Bowman would hit him where he was standing.

  "You've got our attention," Mickey said. "What fool game are you playing?"

  Rab had spent a long and restless night camped south of the Arkansas and near the crossing, and it was a relief to him when the men appeared not long after sunup. He did not want to spend too much of his morning waiting for them. He was eager to get back to the Cummings party before they abandoned the journey because he had not returned.

  "Mine ain't the fool's game," Rab said. "I want you men to listen close to what I say. I've been through this desert before. I'm going to tell you now, you'll never make it if you cross the river. You don't have supplies and can't carry the water you would need to stay alive."

  Mickey snarled at him as Rab finished loading the Hawken. "We'll decide for ourselves whether we've got supplies enough."

  "I reckon you will," Rab said. "But I'm warning you all the same. You come across that river and keep following us, and you'll never cross back over it. Either the desert will get you, or I will."

  "You think you're man enough to take all three of us?" Mickey asked.

  Rab looked at Chess Bowman on the bench of the wagon, then back at Mickey and Bill. "Weren't there four of you? What's happened to the other fellow?" he asked.

  "He's in the wagon," Mickey said, irked because he thought Rab Sinclair was making a point. "There's still four of us."

  Rab craned his neck to see past Chess, and that's when he saw Dick Derugy in the back of the buckboard.

  "That man don't look to be in decent shape," Rab said. "I reckon there's only one way to find out if I'm man enough to take the three of you. Or four of you. I would recommend to you that you leave that an unanswered question."

  Now Rab Sinclair backed away, keeping the Hawken in his folded arms but knowing that he could move it quickly if he had to. "Take my advice," he said. "The desert don't care how much of a man you are. A man with sand all the way to the ground still gets thirsty. I've crossed this desert and others worse than this. I know what I'm talking about. You'll not survive it."

  He reached the top of the south bank and then turned and started down the opposite side. He'd tied the sorrel to a cottonwood below the other bank where the border ruffians would not see the horse as they approached the river. He removed the percussion cap from the Hawken rifle and slid it into its scabbard, and then he mounted up on the sorrel and rode away to hurry to catch the wagon train.

  "What are we going to do?" Bill asked as Rab Sinclair came out from behind the rise on the opposite side of the bank and they could see him off in the distance riding away.

  "We're going to hurry up and try to catch him," Mickey said. "We've got all the provisions we could want to get us through this desert. We just have to catch up to our provisions, is all."

  Mickey turned and looked at Chester. "Come on with that wagon, Chess! Get it across the river and let's keep moving."

  24

  The wagon train had only made about ten miles when Rab Sinclair caught up to it near dusk. Amos Cummings had already called for a stop for the day.

  The wagons were arranged in a half circle. The livestock were picketed near the circle, all of them on long leads so that they could get to what grass there was. The Cummings boys were all engaged in washing the animals when Rab rode up.

  "Don't use too much of that water," Rab cautioned them. If he'd been with them when they halted for the day, Rab would have told them to dry rub the animals and not to use water.

  "Oh, Mr. Sinclair!" Martha Cummings called out when she saw him. "We were growing concerned that something had happened to you."

  Amos and Stuart, Martha and Rebekah, and Graham Devalt, had all been discussing their options. Matthew had told his father about Rab's instructions for going back across the Arkansas River if he did not show up. And that was the conversation they were now having. Only Graham Devalt was not relieved when Rab rode up on the sorrel.

  "You've stopped early," Rab said. "Should have gone on another hour at least."

  "The animals are sore fatigued, Mr. Sinclair," Amos said.

  Rab slid down out of the saddle. He removed the saddle and blanket and gave his horse over to Matthew to picket and rub down.

  "It will get worse," Rab said. "You're probably going to lose some of your animals. Water is scarce, and with a drought on, the water we might have found in the Cimarron will surely not be there. We've got probably eighty miles to make the Lower Spring on the Cimarron River. That's where we'll come to the first water."

  "What delayed you?" Amos asked.

  "It got to gnawing on me what you said about whether or not them men would realize they could not make it across the desert," Rab said. "More I thought about it, the more I thought maybe they ain't smart enough to know that. So I waited at the river to see if they would attempt to cross it."

  "And did they?" Stuart Bancroft asked.

  "They thought about it," Rab said. "I attempted to persuade them. I cannot say if I was successful, but maybe I delayed them a bit longer."

  Rebekah Bancroft and Rachel Cummings were both kneeling at a campfire, preparing an evening meal. In a cast iron skillet, Rachel was cooking cornbread while Rebekah was heating beans with a slab of bacon.

  "We will have to keep moving and press hard," Rab Sinclair said. "If these men cannot see reason and continue to follow us, we must do all we can to stay ahead of them. Until we reach Fort Union in New Mexico, the remainder of our trip will be very difficult. From the
re it will not be far to Santa Fe."

  In the evening, as the sun descended beyond the western horizon, Rab took his three horses and set up his own camp about a half mile to the east of the Cummings camp. He wanted to position himself between Mickey Hogg's ruffians and the Cummings family. If they were traveling at night, Rab wanted to be the first one they came to.

  With the sun down, the night air grew cool, and Rab put on his buckskin jacket and wrapped himself in his bedroll. He was quickly asleep with the three horses picketed around him.

  At some point in the night, Cromwell blew a warning, and Rab opened his eyes. He did not stir but listened for any sound as his hand found his Colt Dragoon beside him in the bedroll.

  There was a moon tonight, and while it was not a full moon, it was enough to cast a silvery light over the terrain. Rab turned his head slightly to scan the road to the east, but he saw no movement nor shadow in the moonlight that might indicate Mickey Hogg or the others riding up.

  Cromwell blew again, and this time it was more urgent. Rab heard a sound to the west and turned his head. He cocked back the hammer of the Colt when he saw a figure moving toward him, but he realized instantly that it was Rachel Cummings.

  "Rabbie?" she whispered into the night. "Are you there?"

  "Miss Rachel?" Rab asked. "What are you doing? Is there a problem at the camp?"

  Rachel leaned forward to peer into the darkness, and then she saw the dark spot on the ground that was Rab's bedroll. She picked her way over to it and kneeled down beside the bedroll.

  "I wanted to come to see you," she said. "I missed you as we rode yesterday and today. I missed spending time with you."

  Rab let down the hammer on the Colt. "Well, I missed you, too."

  "It gets very chilly at night," Rachel said, shivering.

  Rab sat up and swung his legs out of the bedroll, and he lifted up the heavy blanket so that Rachel could sit under it with him.

  "Thank you," she said.

  He did not intend to leave his arm wrapped around her, but when Rachel sat down and Rab put the blanket around her, his arm came around her shoulders. He left it there for a moment, and Rachel reached up and took hold of his hand. Then she leaned into him, snuggling her head against his shoulder, allowing his arm to wrap up her body.

  "I have thought all day about what you said about not leaving when we reach Santa Fe."

  Rab nodded. "I meant it."

  "Are you asking me to stay there with you? Asking me to marry you?"

  Rab was silent for a moment. The idea of marriage was not something he'd ever given much thought to. Among the tribes, marriage was a different sort of thing than it was among white people. So he had not grown up with the same concept of it, though he understood what it meant for white folks.

  "I reckon I am," he said.

  "But what would we do?" Rachel asked. "When we reach Santa Fe, how would we survive? How would you earn money?"

  Rab shrugged under the blanket.

  "I'd find plenty to do. I'm planning to do some prospecting when we get to New Mexico. I can guide or hunt or trap."

  "What kind of life would that offer for me?" Rachel asked. "And what if we had children. Could you earn enough money to support a family?"

  It was a perplexing question. Rab Sinclair had never once in his life thought about a thing like a career. If he'd ever given thought to the future, it didn't look like much of anything other than maybe a log cabin near a spring with plenty of game. And if he'd thought about having a woman, it was never a woman like Rachel Cummings.

  In the flash of an instant, Rab Sinclair saw that whatever he felt for Rachel was not a thing that could last.

  "These are not things I've given much thought to," Rab said. "Maybe I was too loose with my speech when I said that you could stay with me in Santa Fe."

  "I want to," Rachel said. "But it frightens me to think of what kind of life that would be. It's not a life I'm accustomed to."

  "No, I reckon not," Rab said.

  "I don't know that it's a life I could be happy with," Rachel said. "But then I think that if I was with you, I could be happy in any kind of life."

  Rab did not know what to say, and so he said nothing.

  Rachel needed to fill the silence.

  "It was already so much to pick up where we were and leave to go all the way across the country to something completely new. And now you have me thinking of not even going all the way with my family, but stopping in some wild and distant territory, alone and separated from everyone else that I know. And the thought of it scares me. I don't know that I am cut out to be the wife of a frontier man."

  "I would find a way to give you the kind of life you want," Rab said.

  "What if I want parties and to entertain guests?" Rachel said. "What if I want to live in a town, in a big house, and have fine luxuries? I just don't know that I can live in a wild place, and I don't know that you can live in a place that is not wild."

  Rab took a heavy breath and turned his face toward Rachel. He put a hand to her cheek and turned her face toward him. Rab put his lips against her lips, and he wrapped both arms around her, holding her close to him.

  And in that moment Rachel gave herself over to him, wild though he was. She embraced the passion she felt. She abandoned her fears and her worries, and she allowed herself to live in the moment without a thought to what it might mean.

  Later, when she fell asleep in his arms, pressed against the warmth of his body under the blanket of his bedroll, she did not worry about what it might mean or what kind of life she would have.

  Graham Devalt woke in the middle of the night. The lanterns around the camp were all extinguished, but in the light of the moon he could see the others in their bedrolls.

  He could see, too, that Rachel's bedroll was empty.

  He knew where she must have gone, and his heart was sick over it. Not for the first time on this trip, he cursed his decision to join Amos Cummings. And he again wished he had stayed back east where he was happy.

  ***

  The western sun seemed to fill the entire sky. It was a brutal heat bearing down on the travelers.

  The Kansas prairie had been hot, but under the canvas of the covered wagon, a man could find shade and maybe a bit of a breeze that offered relief. An afternoon nap beneath a wagon could be pleasant enough. Mounted, or even on the wagon's bench, even if no wind was blowing a breeze could be got up that would make the heat sufferable. But most of the time a good wind blew out across the prairie.

  Here the wind that blew seemed to carry more heat. It certainly carried bits of sand that got in the eyes and the teeth and the nose. They were in the high plains proper now, though they might as well have been in the desert. Sage brush and buffalo grass littered the landscape in patches but left plenty of spots for the wind to whip up sand to assault the exposed places. The sun seemed to occupy at least half of the sky. It grew enormous here, and the heat it put off was like an adobe stove. The heat not only came from the sky, but it came up from the ground, too, so that a man felt cooked from top and bottom.

  Rab now rode with his buckskin jacket tossed into the back of one of the wagons.

  The ground was baked hard, and this was the only grace in the desert. It meant the wagons could roll easier and faster. If the animals could better stand the heat, they might make twenty miles every day from the ease with which the wagons rolled across the hard ground. But the animals had to be stopped more frequently and allowed to graze and drink from buckets filled with river water.

  They were now making not much over ten miles a day, and the first good spring was still more than sixty miles away.

  The wagons had stopped again to rest the animals. Rab Sinclair had ridden to check their back trail. For two nights in a row, Rachel had snuck away and joined him at his camp. Graham Devalt had been aware of it both nights. And now, with Rab away and everyone at a stop, Graham Devalt decided to play his card. Amos Cummings and Martha Cummings were sipping water. Their daughter
was standing with them, waiting her turn.

  "You look exhausted Rachel," Graham said.

  Martha Cummings looked at her daughter. "You do look exhausted," Martha said.

  "I'm sure we all look exhausted," Rachel said.

  "I suppose that's true," Martha said. "This heat, it takes so much out of you."

  "I feel drained all the time," Amos agreed.

  Graham would not be deterred so easily.

  "I suppose getting up and leaving camp in the middle of the night only adds to the exhaustion caused by the heat," Graham said.

  "What's that?" Amos asked.

  Rachel shot Graham a look, and she saw on his face that he knew.

  Martha Cummings saw the look of terror on Rachel's face. And she immediately understood.

  "Have some water, Rachel," Martha said. "Graham, you should have some water, too."

  "What do you mean 'leaving camp'?" Amos Cummings asked.

  Graham grimaced, as if he did not want to say any more. "I've noticed the last couple of nights Rachel has awakened in the middle of the night and left our camp."

  "And gone where?" Amos demanded.

  Rachel did not answer, and Graham was only too happy to provide the answer himself.

  "She's been going to Mr. Sinclair's camp."

  "For what purpose?" Amos asked, fury rising in his voice.

  "I have only gone to visit Mr. Sinclair to talk with him and keep him company because I know he is standing watch for us," Rachel said, but her excuse sounded weak, even to her.

  Amos Cummings grasped her by the wrist. "You'll not defile yourself with that man," he said. "He is no better than a savage."

  "Amos," Martha said, her voice soft, and she reached out and put a hand on his arm. But Amos Cummings did not release his grip on his daughter's wrist.

  "Has he touched you?" Amos asked.

  Graham Devalt smiled at Rachel, and then he turned and walked away. He'd done what he wanted to do.

  "I am in love with him," Rachel said.

  "That's not an answer to my question," Amos said, the anger in his voice frightened his daughter. She had never heard him sound like that before.