Kiowa Trail (1964)

by L'amour, Louis

  Leading off at a gallop, I started back over the trail. The storm was drawing near, the wind blowing so that it was difficult to catch one’s breath. It was almost dark now, but I held my direction across the wind, watching in every flare of lightning for a glimpse of the trees.

  We saw the rain coining before it reached us. Black clouds covered the upper sky, but moving along the horizon was a lighter band of rain. When it reached us I knew we would be drenched. Suddenly, in a white flare of lightning I saw the wind-whipped tops of the trees.

  “We’re going to make it!” I yelled … but we did not.

  The rushing wall of water caught us with only twenty yards to go, and within a few feet we were drenched to the skin. In the hollow, there was some shelter from the mighty rush of wind, and swinging down, I led the horses into the black cavity under the tree. It was quieter there, and they seemed glad to be free of the wind and most of the rain.

  With my bowie knife I hacked branches from the willows and worked them into the branches above us to make a thicker roof for our little shelter. The bodies of the horses, between us and the opening, helped some, and the thickness of the branches above, the inclined trunk of the tree, and the brush around us gave added protection.

  There had been no time before to get my slicker, but now I got it from behind my saddle, with the two blankets I carried. Using the slicker for a screen against the wind, we each wrapped in a blanket and huddled together against the storm. And there, exhausted, we both fell asleep.

  At daybreak, with the storm gone, I built a small fire and made coffee and a thick broth of jerked beef. While it was heating, I examined Kate’s arm. It was in bad shape, though the wound itself was not a serious one. The bullet had gone through the fleshy part of the arm, causing her to lose blood. With proper care it would be all right.

  Though I had learned about herbs from the Indians, I recognized none that I could see around me here. My medicine had been learned from the Apaches of the deserts and mountains, not from the Kiowas, Arapahoes or Cheyennes of the southern plains. The closest care her arm could get would be in Hackamore. So we wasted no time.

  As we started to go, she looked over at me and said, “Conn, that’s the second time you’ve told somebody that I was your woman.”

  “The third,” I replied, and then led off to the west. And after a moment, she followed.

  Chapter 10

  Kate’s story was simple enough. On the morning of the attack the men had scattered along the wire before daylight, checking for breaks. They found several cuts, which they repaired, and had started back toward camp in the first gray of dawn.

  “My horse was saddled,” Kate said, “for I always had a saddle horse ready for every man in case of emergency, and one for myself. Harvey Nugent saved my life. All of a sudden we heard a thunder from the west, and we looked around. There was dust in the air over the small valley in that direction. Harvey just grabbed me by the waist and threw me into the saddle.”

  “Stampede!” he yelled. “Ride!”

  He had given her horse a cut with his rope, and it was gone with a bound. Over her shoulder she saw a herd of maddened, fear-driven steers come boiling up over the rim from the valley.

  “How about the rest of them? Did they make it?”

  “I don’t know. My horse simply ran away with me, and we were two miles off before I got him under control. By that time it was too late to do anything, and I had been shot.”

  “Who shot you?”

  “There was a man with a rifle. He was standing on the hill beyond the valley from which the herd came. He was in plain sight when I looked back and saw the steers coming. Dust was rising, but it hadn’t obscured the place where he stood, and I saw him as plainly as I see you now. He lifted his rifle, held his aim, then fired.”

  It must have been, I thought, a good three hundred yards. But a man who could see well enough to score a bit at that distance could see well enough to know it was a woman he was shooting at.

  “At that distance you couldn’t have recognized him.”

  “Oh, I’ll know him!” Kate looked at me. “Conn, that man wanted to kill me. He wanted me to go down and be trampled under those hoofs, and no one would ever guess I had been shot.”

  “How will you know him?”

  She hesitated, an instant only. “He wore a black and white cowhide vest, like you’d get from a Holstein cowhide.”

  How long since either of us had seen a Holstein cow? The Holstein was dairy stock, and at the moment I doubted if there were a dozen Holsteins west of the Mississippi. Certainly I’d never seen one in Texas, although I’d not say it was impossible. And the chances of two such vests in this area were slightly beyond reason.

  The sky was a vast plain of blue above the gray-green of the plain below, and wherever we looked there was only the long grass bending, rippling under the touch of the wind.

  “Did you see anything else that would identify the man with the cowhide vest?” I asked as we rode along. “The one who shot you?”

  “Only that he seemed to be thin … or that was the impression I got. At the distance, I couldn’t be sure.”

  This woman who rode beside me was the woman I loved, and the woman I had loved … how long? From the moment we met, I knew. Yet in all our years together I had found no way to tell her, no opportunity to talk of love. Only too rarely had I talked to women, and words did not come easy to me. And I lacked confidence in my ability to say what I meant, what I felt. Nor did I have any idea that she would listen.

  Now, as we rode, my mind was filled with thoughts of her.

  How many times had I, in the course of our time together, turned to look at her profile against the light? Finely made and lovely she was, strong and courageous, and fit to mother a race of sons for such a country as the Big Bend.

  She was of that country and, like myself, she knew when she reached it that she had come home at last. She loved it as if born to it - the far reaches of the Big Bend country, the Bend itself, and the land beyond. From Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos to El Paso del Norte, from Fort Davis to Ojinaga or Lajitas.

  That was our country, and the very names were a special land of music to our ears; for the names were born of the country itself, names such as Slickrock Mountain and the Mule Ear Peaks, Black Mesa, Yellow Hill, and the Blue Range, Left-Hand Shut-Up and Banta Shut-in, the Chinati Mountains, Frenchman Hills, and the beautiful loneliness of The Solitario, Wildhorse Mountain, Saltgrass Draw, and the Mariscals - she knew them all, as I did.

  We had ridden the land together, scouting the stark hills, seeking out the lonely water holes, or the tanks that might become sources of water after the rains. She rode with grief, and I with a restlessness born of fear that this way of life, too, might pass.

  Not since I was a young boy had I known anything like a home, nor felt there was a place where I belonged. Despite the thoughtfulness of the family of Jim Sotherton, I was a stranger there; and returning to my own country, I was a stranger again.

  I thought back to the fall of 1858 when, just back from England, I bought a ticket in St. Joseph for Salt Lake, twenty-one days by the stage, which stopped every few hours to let the mules graze or water. No through stage route, with frequent stations for changing horses, had yet been organized, but I did not mind the leisurely ride, for I was slowly getting again the feel of my own country.

  At Salt Lake I dismounted from the stage into a town buzzing with rumors of a gold strike at Pike’s Peak, so with almost the last of my money I bought a horse and a pack mule and rode over the mountains to Cherry Creek and the diggings.

  On the first night, in came a husky miner who stared hard at me and then said, “Say, now, ain’t you the kid who killed Morgan Rich?”

  Every head turned, for it was a time when “bad men,” men reputed to be bad men to tangle with, were much talked of. They were matched in many an argument, and debates raged as to who was the fastest and the best shot. Their various merits were discussed like those of ra
ce horses, foot racers, or prize fighters. And Morgan Rich had been a known man.

  “That was a long time ago,” I said, and turned to leave. He caught my arm.

  “Aw, come now!” he protested, “let me buy you a drink!”

  “I don’t drink,” I replied, which was almost true.

  “Think you’re too good to drink with me?” he demanded belligerently. “If you think I’m afraid -”

  “I am sure you are not,” I said, and walked out. And when daybreak came I was far from camp, riding away.

  That should have ended it, but it did not. Only two nights later a thin, dark man with greasy eyes recognized me and commented aloud, “This here’s that would-be gunfighter that McCloud ran off Cherry Creek.”

  “You’re a liar,” I told him quietly, “and if McCloud says any such thing, he’s a liar.”

  “You can’t talk that way to me!” So there it was, and if I allowed the story to continue it would hound me wherever I went. “You’re wearing a gun,” I said, putting it squarely up to him.

  He didn’t like it. He didn’t want any part of what he had. He had believed me to be a bluff, and now he had been fairly called, with death lying before him like an open hand of cards … all black.

  He was only a loud-mouth. He did not want to fight, but now he was faced with the same alternative as I, both of us caught by a way of life neither of us wanted. Yet he must fight or be treated contemptuously, as a coward. Wildly, desperately, he grabbed for his gun.

  And I killed him.

  It was not in me to do so, but it was the rules of the game in the land and the time in which we lived. Before the day was over, I drifted again, this time to Santa Fe.

  Later, in Austin, Texas, I joined the Rangers, and for two years I rode the border on the side of the law.

  The war came suddenly, unexpectedly to me, who had avoided controversy, and was often far from sources of news. But when it came I resigned from the Rangers and rode north to join the Union cavalry. And it was to Captain Edwards - now Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards - that I went.

  He was a bachelor, a tall, austere man, lonely as I had been, but a man with a deep love for those same wild lands from which I came. So we sat long and talked of England and the Continent, where he had been as a boy, and then of Texas and the border country and the Indians.

  My Ranger experience, my knowledge of scouting and Indian lore, qualified me in his estimation, and he convinced others. I was given a commission, and rode with Phil Sheridan’s cavalry.

  Sheridan looked at me coolly at first when we met. “You’re a Texan?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “and when the war is over I shall be a Texan again. I simply do not approve of secession. I am fighting, sir, to preserve the Union.”

  “So am I,” he replied.

  When the war was over I had the rank of captain, and no more future than a spent bullet.

  Drifting into Mexico, I encountered an old enemy, a fugitive from Texas law, now a power in Chihuahua City, and married into a good Mexican family. We had words. He was quicker to speak than to draw a gun, although he was anxious to try. He would have done better to have talked less, or talked more pleasantly.

  A tall, handsome Mexican glanced at the body, and then at me. “I never liked him,” he said, “but -“. He shrugged. Then he said, “If you do not have a fast horse, I could lend you one.”

  It was a tactful suggestion, for which I was grateful. “May I buy you a drink?” I said.

  His eyes twinkled faintly. “Of course … some other day… and north of the border.”

  In other words, to hurry would not be amiss. When I mounted, the North Star was gleaming in the sky, pointing the way to Texas.

  Days later, my horse scarcely dry from crossing the Rio Grande, I rode into the life of Kate Lundy.

  And now, riding beside me, Kate jarred me from my memories. “Conn!Look !”

  It was a dust cloud, which meant a herd of buffalo or cattle, or a large party of horsemen, and they were following a route that would shortly cross our path.

  I turned swiftly, rode down into a draw, and headed out of it at a gallop, with Kate Lundy close behind me.

  We could hear the thunder of the approaching hoofs, and we slowed down and walked our horses. The riders went through the draw not fifty yards behind us … but out of sight.

  It could only have been McDonald and his men, bound for Hackamore.

  When we came up out of the draw, I resumed my original route. Kate, hanging on by sheer nerve, rode up beside me. “Where are we going? This is the wrong direction for Hackamore.”

  It was not in me to lie to her. “You wouldn’t last to Hackamore. You’d pass out and take a fall. We’re riding back to town.”

  “To town?”

  “You need help. There’s a doctor there, and there’s a bed. I shall see that you have both.”

  For a moment she did not speak, and then she said, “Conn, they’ll kill you back there. It’s you they want now. You, and perhaps me.”

  “Me, anyway,” I agreed; “but the worst of them will have gone west toward Hackamore, and your arm is in bad shape. If it is cared for, it will be all right. You’re going to have care.”

  “It was only a flesh wound.”

  “From a greasy bullet? Carried, you’ve no idea, how nor where? That wound needs cleaning.”

  When we approached the town they did not see us coming, for I used every bit of low ground possible, and the first thing they knew, we were riding up the street.

  John Blake stepped out to meet me.

  “Hello, John,” I said. “You didn’t ride with them?”

  “Iam the town marshal, not a hired gun hand.”

  “Glad to hear it. Where’s the doctor?”

  He glanced quickly at Kate, and I saw his face stiffen. He turned around sharply. “This way … Doc’s in his office.”

  The doctor looked up as we entered. His eyes went quickly to Kate, and he leaped for her and caught her just as she started to crumple up. But she was still conscious, still fighting.

  We put her on the settee, and John Blake turned away toward the window. His face seemed carved from stone.

  “How did that happen? Accident?”

  “It was no accident, Mr. Blake.” Kate spoke clearly. “That shot was fired with every intention of tailing me, by someone who knew who I was.”

  “Who?”

  “A man in a cowhide vest - black and white cowhide.”

  Blake showed that he was shocked. He said to me, “What sort of man was he? Did you see him?”

  “Kate saw him. I was nowhere around. Thin, she said. He was some distance off, but if he could see well enough to score a hit, he could see who he was shooting at. And we don’t have any cowhands who ride side-saddle.”

  Doctor MacWhite was sponging off Kate’s arm. It was dark and swollen, except around the wound itself, which was raw and red.

  “John,” I said, “I am going to find the man who wore that vest.”

  He was silent, and his expression puzzled me. There was still that shocked, almost stupefied look to him.

  “You know who owns that vest,” I said, “and I want to know who it is.”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to find out, John.”

  “Leave it alone,” he urged, almost pleading. “Leave it alone, Conn. She’s not badly hurt - she’ll be all right.”

  There was a sound of boots on the boardwalk, and then the door was thrust sharply open.

  Linda McDonald stepped in. Behind her were a dozen of the townsmen, with rifles. “There they are!” she said. “I told you they were here.”

  “All right,” the leader of the men said. He was a man I remembered seeing standing near Tallcott that day outside the bank. “Come on, you. Drop those guns.”

  John Blake stepped between us. “What’s the matter with you, Burrows? Dury brought Mrs. Lundy in - she’s been shot.”

  “That makes no difference. He’s one of them, and he’ll han
g. And her, too,” he added defiantly.

  “Not while I am marshal,” John Blake replied quietly.

  Linda McDonald turned on him. “Pa told me you’d join them, given half a chance. He never did like you.” Her face was flushed, her eyes bright. “And he left me this!”

  She was enjoying herself, that much was sure. In a sense, her father was now telling off the great John Blake. It was, to her, another illustration of his power, and she was glorying in it.

  “He left me this,” she repeated-“the right to tell you that you’re fired!”

  “What!” John Blake exclaimed in astonishment.

  “That’s right, Blake,” Burrows said. “He told me he’d left word with Linda. If you crossed us up, you were to be fired.”

  Burrows liked it, too. He was a small man despite his size, and he was enjoying the putting down of a man who had so long been held up as a power in the town.

  “You’re not the law, Blake. You’re out of it.”

  Kate lifted herself on her good elbow. “Do you want a job, John? I’ll offer you one.”

  He hesitated. “No,” he said finally, “I know nothing about cows.”

  “Then take this,” Kate said. “The first thing, when this trouble started, I sent for it. I knew if anybody could keep the peace it would be you. The trouble was, I held it off. I didn’t give it to you. I didn’t see you, but I didn’t look for you, either, and for that I am to blame.”

  He took the telegram, and all eyes were on him. He read it, and then he looked up at her. “You understand this? It leaves me free. No strings.”

  “That’s the way it should be, Marshal. That’s why I used what influence I had to get the appointment for you. I want no favors, nor do I want favors for anyone else.”

  Burrows looked from one to the other, trying to figure it out. “He ain’t no marshal,” he protested. “He was fired.”

  Linda McDonald’s eyes were bright and hard. “Of course he’s a marshal, Mr. Burrows,” she said. “Probably a United States deputy marshal. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Lundy?”