Kill McAllister

by Matt Chisholm

  Grotten nodded. It was a wise precaution.

  Forster rode across the rear of the herd, called to Sholto and the man came on the run. Forster looked him over. The man looked shaken, but that did not disturb the captain. A man had a right to look that way after what Sholto had just been through. Killing a whole outfit wasn’t a thing a man did every day of the week. He told the man what he proposed and they rode back over the wide trail left by the stampeding cattle. When they reached the valley, they rode from fallen man to fallen man, checking to make sure they were all dead. When they reached the south end of the valley, they pulled up their horses and Sholto said: “That’s taken care of.”

  Forster sat still in the saddle, thinking.

  “Wait a minute. What about the nigger?” he said.

  “What nigger?”

  “The first man I shot was a nigger.”

  “I didn’t see no nigger.”

  Forster looked doubtful for a moment.

  “I was pretty sure he was black.”

  Sholto knew that there were Texas outfits who used Negro hands. It was possible.

  “Maybe you was mistook. Was he close?”

  “No,” Forster said, “he wasn’t all that close. I could have been mistaken. But I remember where he fell. Over there. Let’s go take a look.”

  They turned their horses in the direction he indicated. When they reached the spot where Forster thought he had seen the man fall, he said: “It was here. I’m certain.”

  “Well, he ain’t here now that’s for sure,” Sholto offered.

  Forster showed impatience.

  “Where the hell is he, then? I hit him fair and square. He wouldn’t be walking anywhere.”

  He looked around. The ground was churned and marked by hoofs. His eyes fell on twin narrow ruts in the surface of the ground.

  “Hold on a minute.”

  He swung down from the saddle, walked along the ruts for a few paces and then raised his eyes to the brush and rocks above. Leading his horse, he traced the ruts to the rim of the valley. Sholto rode behind him. In the brush, Forster pointed to the ground.

  “Look. There’s been a horse here. Somebody came here and dragged that nigger to a horse. He’s taken him off.”

  Sholto pushed his hat to the back of his head.

  “It don’t seem possible,” he opined. “Who’d’a done a thing like that?”

  Slight apprehension struck Forster.

  “I don’t know who did it,” he said. “But we’ll damned soon find out. Look, they went south. They mounted double and went south.”

  Forster stepped into the saddle and they headed south, but that didn’t get them anywhere for after a few hundred yards the tracks of the horse were lost in those of the herd. Forster swore in sudden fury. He was worried now.

  “They must have either followed the herd tracks back south or cut off east or west.”

  “Then they got away,” Sholto said. “This is a kind of big country. Hell, I ain’t no hand at trackin’. This is a job for the half-breed.”

  Forster clapped his thigh.

  “Nick! Sure, that’s the answer. Ride hard for the herd, Sholto, and send Nick back to me. Tell him to fog it.”

  Sholto said: “Keno,” put spurs to his animal and raced away down the valley.

  Forster stayed where he was, thinking.

  He was in a fix now and he didn’t like it. If that nigger got away and talked, his having the herd could come to nothing. More than that, he could find himself dangling by the neck. Forster felt a little sick at the thought and real fear briefly touched him. That black must be hunted down and killed. Him and the man who was with him. Could it possibly be McAllister? Perish the thought, he told himself. The man had been too badly beaten to sit a horse for a month. No, somebody else had entered the play. Well, they would both have to be killed and quick before they could reach any kind of settlement.

  But what if they weren’t found and killed?

  The possibility didn’t bear thinking on, but Forster knew that a wise general planned for all possibilities. He drove his brain furiously. Holst would likely not touch any cattle he took him in view of what had happened in Combville. He had planned to get rid of them with another contact he had further west. But that would be risky if the shot man talked. So what else could he do with the damned cows?

  Suddenly, an idea hit him.

  Grotten’s brother.

  It was like an inspiration. He laughed out loud. There were real possibilities there. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. Dice and his brother were close; Mike would do anything for Dice. Mike had the range, but not the cows. He was land rich and cow poor. The problem was solved. Forster and Grotten would bring Mike in on the deal and they would both go into the cattle rearing and fattening business. They could sell beef when some of the fuss died down, they could sell further north, they could carry out a massive brand change. It would be tricky but it could be done. It had been done before and it would be done again.

  He planned on excitedly to himself, until he saw the mounted figure of the halfbreed racing back toward him. This was Nick Wetherby, a halfbreed Osage. If anybody could pick up the sign of the missing men, it was him.

  Nick pulled his horse back onto its haunches. He was a thickset, ugly man. He didn’t like whites much and he hated Indians. He owed loyalty only to himself, but he kept in with the Forster gang because the members treated him more or less as an equal.

  “Sholto says you got sign, boss,” he said.

  Forster explained to him what he thought had happened and what he wanted. Nick twisted his face into a quick grin and said: “This ain’t goin’ to be easy. Take time. You go ahead. I tell you when I find somep’n.”

  Forster turned his horse and rode north, knowing he had left his problem with an expert. Nick turned south riding along the edge of the cow-sign, watching the ground close to the east. He covered five slow miles this way, then reckoned he had gone far enough this turn. He crossed the cow sign to the west and now rode slowly north, watching the ground to the west. It was near nightfall when he found what he wanted about a mile south of the valley – the sign of one horse, carrying double, as he knew, going north-west. The halfbreed chuckled to himself. It had been easier than he thought. Come the following day, he’d find those two men for the boss and then they would be dead. He liked the thought of that. Violence with him on the winning side was one of his few simple pleasures. He rode north along the valley, passed through it and rode on five miles north till he came to the sight of a fire.

  He was challenged. He answered and rode in.

  Forster looked up eagerly from his meal.

  “Well?”

  Nick slipped from the saddle.

  “I find ’em, boss,” he said with pride. “Goin’ north-west. Dawn, we find ’em. They ain’t goin’ so far. Ridin’ double. One man hurt bad. Find blood a-plenty. Maybe dead now, huh?”

  “Start before dawn. Pick up the trail at first light,” Forster said. “Dice and Sholto’ll go with you. Me too maybe. Those two have to be dead.”

  Nick grinned.

  Chapter 12

  McAllister’s whole body ached with holding Sam upright in the saddle. He slipped to the ground as the canelo halted and Sam slewed sideways in the saddle and would have fallen had it not been for the belt looped over the saddlehorn. McAllister knew that he had to get working on those wounds or it would be to no avail his getting Sam away from the Kansas men. He reached up to support Sam and listened. Nothing but the normal prairie sounds reached him. He reckoned not even Kansas men would be fools enough to hunt him in the dark.

  The water glistened not far off in the moonlight. He’d have to light a fire, boil water. He got Sam’s belt free of the horn and eased the man to the ground. It hurt his ribs like hell. He got the tarp from behind the saddle, spread for Sam and rolled him onto it. He was in a fairly sheltered spot here; there was sparse brush growing alongside the creek and he would risk lighting a fire. He fou
nd some stones, some dry kindling, then took another look at Sam. The man was shaking like an aspen leaf and he was unconscious. A terrible sadness came down over McAllister, because he could see himself riding on very shortly without the Negro. He knew Sam was tough, but he had two pieces of lead in him most likely and they would take some getting out. The travel on horseback hadn’t done him too much good.

  McAllister got the fire going, fetched water from the creek. Pretty soon the water was boiling. He found his small pocket knife and opened it. In his saddlebags: he found a little whiskey.

  Sam woke up and asked: “Where we at, boy? They after us?”

  McAllister said; “We reached water like you said, Sam. They ain’t around here right now. I’m goin’ to take the lead out of you.”

  Sam snorted.

  “Wastin’ your time, man. Git on yo’ way an’ leave me to die.”

  “You can see me doin’ that,” McAllister said with disgust. “Have a snort.” He put the whiskey bottle to Sam’s mouth and the man drank a little. McAllister reckoned he’d best not have too much, hit in the belly as he was. He sipped himself and felt a little better. He told Sam: “Ready?”

  “As ever.”

  McAllister pulled a shell from his belt and gave it to the trail-boss. “Bite on that, feller.”

  Sam got it between his teeth and grinned a little.

  McAllister covered all of him except his face and his belly with blanket and coat. He was still shaking badly. McAllister stirred the fire so that he had some light to see by and picked up the penknife. He cut away the shirt that was adhering to the blood. The whole front of the garment was soaked. With the hot water and a rag torn from his own shirt, he washed away the now congealed blood and found the bruised and smashed flesh to be to the left of the belly and over the hip bone. He rolled Sam onto one side and found the flesh at the rear of the hip.

  “Lucky ole bastard,” he said conversationally. “Went in front an’ out the rear.”

  “Lucky?” said Sam. “Man, I’d hate to be unlucky.”

  McAllister unfastened the pants belt and pulled them down, wiping away the blood he found over the lower belly, the tops of the thighs and the buttocks. The wound was still bleeding, so he made pads after he had cleaned the wound with whiskey and tied them firmly in place with strips of blanket. It wasn’t a perfect arrangement, but it would have to do. Throughout this operation, which must have been painful in the extreme, Sam didn’t utter a sound.

  “That’s one,” said McAllister. “Let’s start on the other.”

  “I sure am perforated,” Sam said evenly.

  Sam rolled over on his face and McAllister cut away the remainder of the shirt. The whole of the black back was caked in blood. In places he had to rip the shirt free. Sam winced once, but he didn’t say anything. McAllister washed away the blood and stirred the fire up again. He found the wound up near the right shoulder socket and there was no exit hole. So he would have to search for lead. He cleaned the blade of the small knife in some whiskey, gave Sam and himself another snort and got to work. The hole was big enough to thrust a thumb in and looked ferocious. Blood was oozing from it, which McAllister thought was a good thing from the dirt point of view. But Sam must be pretty weak after losing so much blood. He probed for the lead with the small blade and found it quickly lodged up against the shoulder socket.

  “This is goin’ to hurt you more’n it does me,” he said.

  “Doin’ that right now,” said Sam. “Admit it, you’re enjoyin’ yo’self.”

  McAllister chuckled.

  “I just found out a nigger’s red inside and bleeds just like a whiteman,” he said. “I always thought they was made different.”

  Sam said through his teeth: “Don’t waste no more whiskey on that knife, son. Let’s kill that bottle.”

  McAllister gave him another drink and finished the bottle himself. He found he was shaking as much as Sam. But getting the lead out wasn’t as difficult as he thought. The bullet must have been nearly spent when it hit Sam. It came away with a fresh rush of blood. Quickly he made a pad and tied it tightly in place over the wound. But die blood continued to come and the fact worried him. He found the pressure points and held them hard for some time, but it didn’t do much good. He knew that if he kept that wound clean it would be a miracle. If he could keep Sam still, it would have been difficult, but they had to be moving and he felt that, if he moved the man, it would kill him.

  The Negro rolled onto his back and moved his right arm. A look of ecstasy came over his face.

  “You see that – I moved my arm. Boy, you should of been a sawbones.”

  “Sam,” McAllister said, “you feel like ridin’? We have to keep movin’. Come dawn we have to be a long way from here.”

  “Don’t I know it. Rem, you thought which way you goin’?”

  “Creek runs south-east to north-west. Reckon they’ll expect us to go north-west.”

  Sam pursed his lips as he thought.

  “No, sir. The obvious way to go is north-west, so they’ll expect us to go south-east. We go north-west,” he said.

  “All right,” agreed McAllister. “North-west it is.” He rose and killed the fire. Then he found a clean shirt for Sam and got it on him, rolled tarp and blanket and tied them behind the saddle. Getting Sam into the saddle again was a real chore and he suffered as much as Sam did, but, with a good deal of swearing shared equally between them, they got him astride. McAllister tied his feet under the canelo’s belly and led the animal down into the water. He took the animal to mid-stream till the water was up to its belly and turned north-west. The flow of the water was gentle. He looked up at Sam and knew that he was already asleep. This was going to be a long hard pull and he knew that he would have to be in the water till dawn.

  About midnight, it started to rain and, though he welcomed it from the point of view of the downpour obliterating his tracks when he left the creek, it reduced him to a state of abject misery. His slicker he put on Sam, so that within a matter of minutes he was soaked to the skin. However, the rain did give him the opportunity of leaving the water and traveling along the shore on foot. Head down, he tramped stolidly through the rain, every now and then throwing back a remark to the Negro to keep his spirits up. But Sam didn’t show any signs of needing to be cheered. He cracked a joke as frequently as his companion spoke, though McAllister noticed that he often did it through his clenched teeth. As for McAllister, though his ribs were still very sore, the aches of the rest of his body had been almost worked out by the constant exercise and on the whole he was feeling a little more human. Now that he had hard ground under him he made a better pace and he only regretted that running was out of the question.

  It might have been thought by the casual observer that Sam was no more than an inanimate bulk of flesh sitting the saddle, but he proved that he had been keeping his wits about him, for suddenly, he said: “Rem, now’s our chance to git away from the creek while the rain’s fallin’. I reckon it’ll hold some. Swing west. That’ll fox whoever’s on our trail.”

  It made sense and McAllister led the way west, the canelo plodding steadily behind him. After an hour or so the rain slowly came to a stop. They kept on west without stopping and with dawn they came into a heavy ground mist. McAllister halted; he was bone tired and the canelo needed rest as much as the men. McAllister unrolled the tarp, eased Sam to the ground and covered him with the blanket. He unsaddled the horse and put it to graze. The sun came up and struggled with the mist for a while.

  McAllister gave Sam a drink of water and asked him how he felt. Though he didn’t need to ask for he could see the man was in fever.

  “I’ll make out,” the Negro said simply. He refused food, so McAllister ate a little, squatting on the ground beside Sam. He occupied the time, thinking. What the hell did he do now? he asked himself. So far as he knew they were miles from any settlement.

  Slowly, the mist started to clear.

  McAllister thought he heard a distant soun
d and it alarmed him. He got to his feet, sought a rise in the plain and took a look around. The north, south and east were clear, but when he looked west he could scarcely believe his eyes.

  At a distance of less than a mile he saw conical shapes on the face of the prairie that could only be Indian tipis. Alarm rose in him, because he knew that this far west the tribes could easily be hostile and while in Combville he had heard stories of the army in action against the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanches and Kiowas. He hurried back to Sam. The Negro was asleep. He shook him.

  “Sam, wake up.”

  Sam opened his eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s an Indian village west of here. We have to move.”

  The Negro raised himself slowly onto his elbows and stared past McAllister.

  “Too late, boy,” he said, “they found us.”

  McAllister turned.

  A man stood silhouetted against the sky not twenty yards away. The blanket and the feather was enough to show McAllister that it was an Indian.

  Chapter 13

  McAllister reached for the Henry and got slowly to his feet.

  To the right of the first man, a second appeared. McAllister turned his head and saw that there were five men in all. He and Sam were completely surrounded.

  “You got your gun, Sam?” he asked softly.

  “Right here under the blanket,” Sam said. “Take it easy now. Talk before you shoot.”

  McAllister passed the Henry from his right to his left hand, which left his right hand free for a quick draw. The right hand he raised in a sign of peace. None of the Indians stirred, but stood motionless, staring.

  McAllister tried his halting Cheyenne. There was a chance these people were Cheyenne and his past association with that people might just save Sam and himself.

  “Peace, brothers,” he called. “I am called McAllister by the whites. To the Cheyenne I was known as The Diver. I lived in the lodge of Many Horses and I called him father. I was as a son to him and was as a brother to his son, Little Wolf.”