Man in the Saddle

by Matt Chisholm

  He pointed to the mouth of the gully where there arose light wisps of dust. The girl came from her shelter, holding the pistol in a steady hand.

  The atmosphere was close now and a haze of cloud drifted over the sun. A little after they heard the dull rumble of thunder. The whole wild scene before them seemed to take on a gray hue, then the dull sky was ripped apart by a blinding flash of lightning. The clap of thunder that followed was deafening.

  “If it rained now,” Pagley said quietly, “my prayer would be answered.”

  They all looked heavenward and listened to the performance of celestial orchestras. The uproar covered the thunder of the ponies’ hoofs as they made their charge.

  Pagley heaved up his rifle, aimed and found the light too poor for good shooting. The Indians rode abreast in a ragged line, adding their yipping war-cries to the crash of thunder. They looked and sounded like ferocious demons of the storm. They seemed to float over the ground without effort.

  Spur glanced toward the river and saw the slope bare of warriors, but glancing westward, he saw a line of riders racing along the angle of the grade.

  He put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Save your shots for them that get in close,” he told her. She nodded and gave him the briefest flicker of a smile.

  In a sudden break in the thunder, Spur heard the rattle of loose stones and the roll of hoofs on hard ground. He raised his rifle and heard Pagley start to shoot. The Indians he faced dropped to the far side of their horses as one man. He sighted the breast of the foremost horse and fired at an angle. It was a long shot, but it was safest to whittle the numbers down before they got too close.

  The horse somersaulted violently and in apparent silence. As soon as the rider hit ground and started to run, Spur fired again. The animated figure twisted and ran off at an abrupt angle, tripped and fell. Spur at once levered and fired at the next rider, knowing, even as he did so, that it would take more than one rifle to stop them all. A glance at the way these men advanced was enough to tell him that they would not break before him. Nerves and muscles braced themselves for the moment when the ponies were jumped in among the rocks. There was just time for him to promise himself that he would save a shot for the girl, when the nearest warrior appeared on the back of his horse, rearing himself erect and firing at Spur with a revolver as he came.

  Spur fired at him and missed, the horse balked at the rocks and the man heaved its head around by the rawhide thong tied over its lower jaw. Hoofs slipped on stone and the animal looked as if it were going over. The warrior leapt from the primitive saddle, bounded forward and ran into a shot from the girl’s gun.

  The rider behind sent his animal straight into the rocks. Both the girl and Spur fired at him as another Indian smashed his way past Pagley and almost rode into his fellow tribesman.

  After that everything was an untidy mess, a chaos of point-blank shooting, clubbing with rifle butts, stone clubs swinging and knives slashing. Spur was knocked away from the girl, heard her scream, emptied his rifle frantically into figures moving nightmarishly before him, painted faces showing in garish horror in the lightning flashes. He felt one shoulder go numb under a heavy blow., something crashed into his jaw and threatened to tear it away. He lost his rifle and ripped human gut with his bowie knife. His boot heel snapped a wrist. A horse whinnied piteously and ended in abrupt silence.

  Then, as suddenly as they had come, the Indians were gone.

  Spur found himself kneeling by a man who floundered like a landed fish. Spur tried to stand, but his body refused to obey his will. He found that he wasn’t seeing too well and could make little of the objects around him. He strove to sight the retreating Indians and found that his sight seemed to be failing. Something wet and cold splashed against his cheek and he heard the girl say: “Rain.”

  The floundering man groaned and said: “Mother of God!”

  Spur leaned close and saw that it was Pagley.

  The rain fell like a solid sheet of water, sending a chill through his shaking body. He felt a touch on his arm and, turning his head, looked into the girl’s eyes.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “It’s Pagley,” she said.

  Lightning flashed.

  The Delaware’s face showed ashen, hollow-eyed as a ghoul’s. Spur reached out a hand and touched the haft of the spear that transfixed him to the ground. In the gloom that followed the lightning, he ran his hand down the haft to the shoulder socket through which the head was driven.

  Pagley said hoarsely: “Break it.”

  With trembling hands Spur tried to snap the befeathered and painted wood and failed. The girl tried with as much success. The Indian moaned softly. Spur found his knife and worked its keen edge on the haft. After five minutes, he broke the spear and rested on his haunches, sweating in the chill of the rain.

  “Get the liquor,” he told the girl and she went to the downed horse.

  “Pull it through,” Pagley told him.

  “I can’t do that,” Spur said. “It’ll kill you.”

  “It’s missed the bone. Get me up and pull it through. We don’t have all night.”

  Spur marveled at this man.

  The girl came back with the small flask of whiskey.

  “They killed both the horses,” she said.

  Spur gave the Indian a drink of whiskey. Then the girl and he drank.

  “Help me sit him up,” he told the girl.

  He stood up and looked around, straining his eyes, but he could see nothing but driving rain. Even the river was obliterated. When he turned back to Pagley again, the girl had the Indian by the right shoulder and the neck, using all her strength to hold him in a sitting position.

  “Hurry,” she said, “I can’t hold him.”

  She looked up at him, her dark eyes large in her pale face, her hair plastered to her forehead by the rain.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Pagley said, “get on with it.”

  Spur walked around the back of him and saw the bone head of the lance protruding from the left shoulder down near the armpit. Maybe Pagley was right and it hadn’t touched bone.

  He got down on one knee and grasped the spearhead in both his hands. At his touch the muscles of the Indian’s back braced themselves.

  “Now,” Spur said softly, and pulled.

  Pagley moaned softly again.

  Spur rose to his feet, put one knee in Pagley’s back and heaved steadily. Spear-head and broken haft came away in his hands, followed by a rush of dark blood. The Delaware arched his back in pain and the girl struggled to hold him, muttering encouragement to him. But the Indian tore himself from her grasp. Spur dropped the remains of the spear and grasped him by both shoulders and said to the girl: “Rag, quick.”

  She took Pagley’s neck-scarf off him and handed it to Spur who balled it in his hand and thrust it hard against the rear wound.

  “He’s bleedin’ in front,” the girl said.

  Spur thrust an arm over the Delaware’s shoulder and pressed hard on the forward wound.

  “Feels better already,’ Pagley said and fainted.

  Spur laid him down on his right side. He said to the girl: “Take over here. Put pressure on both wounds.” She took his place. Spur went to the saddlebags on the dead horse, found a spare shirt and tore it in strips. With this, he hastily dressed both wounds and made both secure with the bloody scarf. Then he dragged Pagley into the shelter of the blanket that had protected the girl from the burning sun.

  By midnight the Delaware was in a fever, tossing restlessly and muttering in his own language. Spur knew that he had to get him to better shelter, had to keep him warm. Shortly after, the rain stopped abruptly. The girl came close to Spur and he put an arm around her.

  Were the Indians still out there? he asked himself. He weighed the risks for Pagley: the risk of their staying where they were, the risk of moving him. He put it to the girl and she said: “My guess is they’ve gone.”

  Spur said: “If we move him and they have
n’t gone, it’s all up with us.”

  “We can’t light a fire here,” the girl told him. “It’s fire he wants. We have to get in a gully. Where they can’t see the flame if they are still around someplace.”

  Spur thought about it.

  Finally, he said: “All right. We’ll try it.”

  Ten minutes later, he carried Pagley cradled in his arms like a child out of the rocks while the girl staggered along behind with as much of the supplies as she could carry. Entering the first gully they came to was a trial of nerves. The moon was high and clear now and the plain along the edge of the river almost as light as day. But nothing happened. They walked a quarter mile up the gully and found a comparatively safe spot under an overhang. Here Spur lay Pagley down and left him with the girl. He searched around for tinder and wood. With his bowie knife he cut brush and soon “had a fire going. He left the girl to watch over Pagley and after he had made two trips back to the rocks to fetch the rest of the supplies, he took up a station on the rim of the gully to keep watch.

  Chapter Ten

  It was night.

  Spur could see the bright orb of the moon reflected in the distant river. He puffed with great appreciation at what was almost his last pipe of tobacco.

  He thought of what lay before him and realized coldly the craziness of the thing he meant to do. He was a fool to even contemplate it, but he knew that he would never live with himself again if he did not do it. Having this girl here with him, free, forever kept the little Grimes girl fresh in his mind.

  He reviewed the happenings of the last six weeks. And his thoughts inevitably turned again to the girl, Jane.

  The fact that the three of them had been left horseless in a horseman’s country, horseless in a country where a man on foot was as good as a man dead, reminded him how from the start the girl had shown no fear. It had been she who had scouted around and found the sign of the wild mustangs. It was she who had told them how the animals could be caught. And it was she who led them in what Spur and Pagley had thought to be an impossible task. She had brought to bear on the problem of catching the wild ones the years of experience of her father. Under her instruction, Spur had helped her build the brush catch-pen and they had caught the mustangs after days of patient watching and waiting. The animals had come down to the river to drink and six of them were theirs as the rest fled wildly from captivity.

  It was she who had gentled the six of them in a way that Spur had never seen before. It was the Indian way, she told him, a mixture of harshness and kindness, always stopping short of breaking the entire will of the animal. Now the six animals that fed on the dried out grass would all allow her to approach and stroke them. They were not creatures of beauty, but she assured the two men that they would run all day on a handful of grass.

  Spur realized as he had realized few things clearer in his life that here was a woman in a million: tough, reliable and, though not without fear, a brave woman. She thought, as Pagley thought, that they would stay together and go into the country of the Kiowas and rescue the Grimes girl. Spur had decided differently. Pagley was still too weak for long rides. He and the girl must head for the settlements to the south-east. They might not persuade easily, but his mind was made up.

  The soft sound of footsteps brought his hand to his gun-butt. He turned his head and saw the girl dark against the night sky.

  She came and sat beside him, her arm touching his.

  “How long do we stay here?” she asked. “If we wait too long there won’t be the grass for the ponies to take us to the Kiowas and back.”

  “We pull out tomorrow,” he said.

  “Tomorrow!” She was surprised. “You think Pagley’s strong enough for the trip?”

  “He’s not.”

  “Why then?”

  “He’s not going.”

  The pale oval of her face turned to him in the moonlight and he had an almost irresistible impulse to kiss her.

  “He won’t take kindly to being left.”

  “He has to go back into Texas. You’re going with him.”

  She started.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not goin’ an’ you can’t make me.”

  “Pagley would never make it on his own.”

  “Nor would you up against the Kiowas.”

  “Better than with a sick man and a girl.”

  He heard her suck her breath in angrily. “When did I ever hold you up?” she demanded.

  “Never. But I’ll get along better alone.”

  “My God,” she said furiously, “I could hit you.”

  He reached out and touched her face and she flinched at his touch.

  “Jane,” he said, “don’t make it hard for me. Please.”

  She rested her cheek against the palm of his hand and said: “I want to go along.”

  “It has to be my way,” he said and caught her by the hair, pulling her toward him. She did not resist, but slid naturally into his arms. “Girl, I love you.”

  She rolled over in his arms so that she lay across his lap and pulled his head down to hers. She smelled of sagebrush and the warmth of the sun. Her lips were soft and yielding under his. When she took her mouth away from his, she whispered: “I have to come with you. I couldn’t stand bein’ away.”

  “And what would it be like for me, knowing any minute you could be killed. No, we got you away from the Indians and you stay away.”

  “Think of me,” she said. “For months I’ll be wondering if you’re dead or alive.”

  “I shan’t take risks,” he told her. “I promise you that. I have one good reason for staying alive.”

  “But you have to—” He stopped her mouth with his and murmured: “Save it - we’ll argue later. There’s a time for everything.”

  She giggled gently and put her arms around him. They both surrendered to the uprush of passion that enveloped them both and when they lay dreamily in each other’s arms, he knew that here indeed he had a woman in a million.

  Later, while Jane attended to the horses, he talked to Pagley as the Indian lay on the tarp by the fire.

  “Pagley,” he said, “I don’t want a whole lot of argument. I’m going after the Grimes girl in the morning. You get Jane to a settlement.”

  The Indian sat up. His dark eyes glittered in the firelight.

  “Will I hell?” he said.

  Spur leaned forward urgently.

  “For God’s sake listen and quit making like a hero. Something’s happened between Jane and me.”

  Pagley raised his almost non-existent eyebrows. “Like that, huh?”

  “Like that. And I don’t want anything happening to her. Savvy?”

  “Savvy.”

  “So it’s up to you. I told her you aren’t strong enough to get into any Indian fights. She’s taking you back to the settlements.”

  Pagley snarled. “I can ride the ass off you any day of the week, sick or not.”

  “I know. I never said different. But you get that girl somewhere safe and put her on ice for me. Hear?”

  “Sure, I ain’t deaf. But I’m damned if I like it.”

  “Who asked you to like it?”

  “You can’t buck that Two Bulls and his crowd on your lonesome and you know it.”

  “One man might stand a chance where three wouldn’t.”

  “How many Kiowas did we kill? Five? You think they’re goin’ to forget that?”

  “I’ve a plan. It’ll come off.”

  “It better be a good one.”

  “Will you do this for me, Pagley?”

  “I say to hell with you.”

  “Listen. We’ve been partners, man. I’m asking you to do this for me. I’m begging like I never begged a man in my life before.”

  They heard Jane returning. Spur caught the Indian by the arm: “For God’s sake, will you do it?”

  Pagley growled: “All right. But I don’t like it.”

  Spur said: “Thanks.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The parting ha
d been unpleasant and Spur never wanted to go through another five minutes like that. But Pagley and the girl had turned back and he had watched them fording the river from a high ridge. They had exchanged waves and he had turned his two mustangs into the north-west and what appeared to him to be a hopeless task.

  He traveled alone for a week without seeing any sign of life but wild game and a small party of Indians that he dodged. On the eighth day he rested at Bent’s Fort, picked up all the Indian talk that he could and visited with Charles Bent and his wife who were there at that time. The bustle of the place made him dizzy after his months on the plains. Bent told him of the situation at that moment. The Cheyenne and the Arapaho were for the most part quiet. He had traded with them since the spring and had heard no talk of trouble between them and the whites. But the Kiowas were another matter. They had had clashes with the Cheyenne and he had heard talk that they had raided down into the Big Bend country. Some said a party had been all the way to Old Mexico raising hell, stealing sheep, cattle and horses. They had also taken some women and children.

  Spur asked about Whitlock the squawman from whom he and Pagley had first gotten news of a white girl in Kiowa hands. Bent knew the man and said that on the whole he was reliable enough, but he would not say anything that would make trouble with the Indians for him. On being asked about Two Bears whom Whitlock had named as the man who had possession of the girl, Bent said he knew the chief. Spur told him that he had had dealings with a chief named Two Bulls and wondered if Whitlock had become confused with the name. No, the trader told him, they were two different men. Two Bulls was a white-hater and he ran with a young sub-chief known as Man-Who-Catches-Rain.

  Spur traded his ponies and some cash for one of Bent’s Spanish ponies, a chunky little zebra dun with plenty of bottom, and a saddle, thanked his host and hostess for their kindness and rode north-west on the trail that Bent indicated to him.

  His journey to Whitlock’s was uneventful because he ducked trouble all the way, unwittingly keeping his promise to the girl to do his best to stay alive. He traveled with caution and rode the ridge tops. That way he could be seen for a long way, but likewise he could do the same and in this broken country that he was now entering and the high country that he reached before Whitlock’s place it would be easy to run into an ambush in the valleys.