The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  Bishop was almost finished with his supper, laying off the normal second cup of coffee so that he could turn in early and catch some shut-eye prior to being rousted for his turn on the late watch. If he was lucky, he could bank enough sleep in the meantime to get through his shift and face another long day without feeling too run-down by tomorrow’s sunset.

  That is, if they made it that far without more interruptions. Or maybe that was simply wishful thinking.

  As for Indians, hostile or otherwise, he hadn’t seen one yet since their departure from Atoka, and he hoped to keep it that way. During wartime, he’d gone west to miss the military draft and didn’t feel the least embarrassed by his choice. Toby despised slavers but hadn’t felt the need to die or kill somebody else to prove that they were in the wrong.

  Ironically, the journey west had not spared him from killing men at all. Thoughts of the Mason County Hoodoo War intruded on his thoughts until he shut them down, returned his plate and coffee cup to Rudy Knapp at the chuck wagon, and told everyone around the fire a general good night.

  If there was anything to praise about drawing the last night shift, he reckoned it must be the span of time when predators—human or otherwise—slacked off from hunting, once they’d either satisfied their appetites or given up, surrendering to the fatigue that burdened any organism as the clock wound down.

  Coyotes might lie up away from daylight until sundown for the most part, in their hidden dens, but scavenging for sustenance all night would wear them down. They needed meat as soon as possible after they woke and wearied just like anybody else if they were forced to chase after any scrap of food.

  Finished, he took his plate and coffee cup to Rudy Knapp and fetched his bedroll from the chuck wagon, bidding the other hands good night. From there, he walked to the remuda for a final word with Compañero, told the snowflake Appaloosa that he’d be back soon, and got a nuzzle in return.

  The nights were turning cooler as they traveled north, but sleeping in his jacket never kept Bishop awake. As usual, he laid his weapons close at hand, not counting on a raid by night but ready for one if it came.

  As if preparedness was even truly possible.

  Bishop had heard stories claiming that red men wouldn’t fight after the sun went down, for fear of being killed at night and their souls getting lost in darkness, looking for their “happy hunting ground.” He didn’t believe it and had personally viewed the aftermath of two nocturnal raids staged by Apache warriors out in Arizona Territory, killing better than a dozen settlers and kidnapping one child who’d never been retrieved, alive or dead.

  “Enough,” he muttered to himself, and closed his eyes, his right hand resting lightly on the curved butt of his Colt.

  If anyone tried to surprise him while he slept, they would be in for a surprise themselves.

  CHAPTER TEN

  NIGHT TWENTY-ONE. THE drive had finished three weeks on its journey from Atoka and were camping one or two days from Missouri’s border if their luck held out. There’d been no further incidents or loss of stock so far, no repetition of the talking smoke that had put everyone on edge a few days ago.

  Most of the drovers thought they’d ridden out of danger’s reach by now.

  Toby Bishop wasn’t sure.

  He had the second watch this night, with Graham Lott and Estes Courtwright, whom the other hands had started calling “Slim.” Bishop had no clue who had started that, but Courtwright didn’t seem to mind, accepting the nickname for what it was, a label of belonging to the group at large.

  Tonight, there was an intermittent breeze out of the east, bringing a chill along with it. Some folks supposed that springtime weather in the border states was always warm, but that wasn’t the case at all. With sundown, temperatures fell much as they did on deserts farther west, making a watchman thankful for his coat and scarf, even a pair of gloves, before the sun arose.

  Compañero didn’t seem to mind.

  Off to the east somewhere, a nightjar’s warbling call resounded through the darkness. Bishop was familiar with the birds that spent nocturnal hours hunting insects, known to certain rural folk as “goatsuckers” after a superstition that they fed themselves on goat’s milk stolen while the nannies slept in fields or stalls. Pure bunkum, but some people couldn’t let it go, the same way they spun tales of goblins and the like.

  Bishop had given up on fairy tales before he’d run away from home. By then, he knew the world was strange and dangerous enough without exaggerating its inherent risks or fabricating gibberish to keep unruly kids in line.

  At least, it hadn’t worked on him.

  They’d left the tallgrass prairie now, and while the longhorns still found ample forage, they were forced to work at it a little more. No snagging mouthfuls on the move. They had to slow a bit and duck their heads to crop the fodder at their feet, which naturally cost the drive a bit more time each day.

  It hadn’t hurt them yet, but Bishop knew that every extra day tacked on to their long march meant twenty-four more hours when the herd and men attending it were vulnerable, out in open country, prey for anything from sudden storms to men with theft and murder on their minds. Men of all colors, nationalities, what have you.

  None of that made any difference if they were armed and steady-handed, bent on raising hell.

  The only law out here was holstered on his hip and riding in his saddle boot.

  Bishop saw Graham Lott approaching, slowed his Appaloosa long enough for Lott to nod and softly say, “All clear so far.”

  That wasn’t strictly necessary, since all hands would be alert by now if there’d been any trouble, but the preacher couldn’t pass on any opportunity to exercise his vocal cords.

  Bishop offered a salute of sorts, raising one hand to graze his hat brim as they passed each other, riding on in opposite directions, then lapse back into his private reverie. The nightjar called again—but no, it was another one, maybe a hundred yards off from the first he’d heard.

  A budding avian romance, perhaps? Bishop proceeded on his way, wishing the feathered flirters well.

  * * *

  * * *

  TALL TREE CUPPED his hands, mimicked the nightjar’s call again, and heard Iron Jacket answer him in kind from fifty yards away.

  The birds, called colchoneta in the Spanish tongue, were small but vocal, imitated easily with just a little practice. Cries aside, they offered sustenance to travelers, laying their speckled eggs on bare ground without nests. Once young nightjars were hatched, the parents moved them out of danger’s way by carrying the hatchlings in their beaks—or so an old Comanche shaman once proclaimed, though Tall Tree had not witnessed it himself.

  Tonight there were no nightjars within calling distance of the white men’s herd. Tall Tree and his companions took their place in the nocturnal chorus otherwise composed of insects, bats, and owls. Their imitation was not perfect, but white ears—much like the brains to which they were connected—rarely paid complete attention to the sound of nature’s voices.

  One more critical mistake.

  Tonight’s excursion was to be a practice run. They would peel off three steers and make their getaway, if possible, without arousing any of the cowboys in the process. And if that succeeded, on their next visit . . .

  A screech owl’s cry echoed across the plains. Bright Sun doing his best impression, conscious that too many nightjar calls from different directions would mean taking an unnecessary risk. A second owl—Fire Maker, this time—answered from the far side of the herd.

  Tall Tree waited another moment, then uttered his final birdcall prior to moving in, Sharps rifle slung across his back, the cut-down saber in his hand. If killing was required, against his will, he hoped to make it sudden and silent.

  Unseen, his fellow warriors would be closing in upon the herd, six braves extracting three longhorns, while Tall Tree oversaw the operation, supervisi
ng, covering their clandestine retreat. He could not do that with his saber, but just now, when none of the white men had been alerted, he preferred the quiet option if he had to spill their blood.

  And killing one of them, he knew from prior experience, would not disturb him in the least.

  White men were prone to talk about their consciences, a built-in gauge of “right and wrong” instilled in them from childhood, but they never seemed to mind when they were robbing, raping, or killing “redskins.” It had been the same with slavery, Tall Tree recalled, from when his father, Tosahwi—White Knife in English—had waged war against the blue-clad “liberators” led by Stand Watie in the War Between the States. Tosahwi had been killed during the Battle of Pea Ridge, in Arkansas, shot down by Union troops while fighting on the side supporting slavery.

  And why not? Stand Watie’s whole family were slave owners and took black servants with them on the Trail of Tears, establishing a successful plantation on Spavinaw Creek in Indian country. Those kidnapped Africans were only freed by edict during February 1863, a month after the proclamation of emancipation from the White House.

  All that was ancient history, occurring when Tall Tree had barely made the transit into manhood. Now he put it out of mind and focused on the task at hand.

  Three steers, and hopefully no killing.

  But if that was unavoidable, he and his braves were equal to the task.

  * * *

  * * *

  GRAHAM LOTT WAS running over Scripture in his mind as he patrolled the herd, holding the chestnut gelding’s reins loosely in his left hand, his right close to the holstered double-action Starr revolver primed with six .44-caliber rounds.

  Lott reckoned that rehearsing Bible passages helped keep his mind sharp, while suggesting messages he might impart to fellow riders from the Circle K next Sunday, over breakfast. Few of them paid any real attention but he felt obliged to try regardless, on the theory that a seed cast onto arid ground might still take root and grow if the Almighty willed it to be so.

  Another reason that Lott wouldn’t share with any other living soul: He simply loved to talk, even when by himself, and quoting Scripture was the next best thing to talking with another person. And a fair approximation of conversing with the Lord.

  The prairie night was quiet so far, save for more birdcalls than Lott remembered hearing since they’d left the Circle K. Gavin Dixon’s home and outbuildings were ringed by shade trees, oak and elms, where birds roosted and chattered all day long, sometimes into the night.

  Proceeding on his way, Lott reckoned that the longhorns wouldn’t mind him preaching to them—and in fact they might prefer it to his somewhat reedy, off-key singing voice. They couldn’t understand a word of it, he realized, and had no souls to save or lose in any case, but neither could exposure to the Lord’s word do them any harm.

  That grim finale waited for them in St. Louis, at the slaughterhouse.

  As long as it stayed quiet through the final ninety minutes of his shift . . .

  And then, as if his hopeful thought had conjured trouble, Lott saw something that he didn’t understand at first. One of the steers ahead of him, some fifty feet or so, had stepped out from the mass of longhorns either munching grass or dozing. This one seemed intent on going for a moonlight stroll—but what about that picture set his nerves on edge?

  A shadow on the steer’s far side away from him and keeping pace.

  No, make that two shadows in vaguely human form, walking upright but with their shoulders hunched, as if to take advantage of the longhorn as a form of camouflage. Lott thought back to the rustlers who had raided Mr. D’s remuda and provoked bloodshed at Willow Grove—a town he hoped never to see again—and realized that he had happened on a pair of thieves at work.

  Lott drew his Starr revolver, cocked it even though he didn’t need to with its double-action trigger, and called out, raising his voice, “Hold up there! Stop!” Then to his fellow hands on night watch: “Rustlers! Rally round!”

  One of the shadows stood taller then and seemed to lean across the longhorn’s crest with something long and angular in hand. Lott heard a twang and caught a hint of motion, something slender racing toward him, before impact on his breastbone pitched him over backward from the gelding’s saddle, tumbling him to the ground.

  In free fall, Lott still hung on to his pistol, squeezing off a wasted shot skyward before he landed on the turf and felt the wind knocked out of him. More pain lanced through his chest, as if someone was leaning on the object that had skewered him, and then there wasn’t even time for him to scream.

  He died not knowing who had killed him, how they’d done it, or why the Almighty had abandoned him.

  * * *

  * * *

  LOTT’S CRY, IMMEDIATELY followed by a gunshot, prompted Toby Bishop to reverse directions, clucking to his snowflake Appaloosa as he urged it to a gallop. Hoofbeats coming up behind him made him look around, spotting Courtwright as he responded to the truncated alarm.

  Beyond them, all around the fire and chuck wagon, drovers were scrambling from their bedrolls or discarding cups of coffee, drawing guns. Over that hubbub Mr. Dixon’s voice rang out, commanding, “Everyone up and at it! Move!”

  Bishop found Lott where he had fallen, with his chestnut standing off a few yards to the preacher’s left. Even in darkness, Toby could make out the shaft protruding from Lott’s chest, some three feet long and fletched with feathers at the skyward-pointing end. The preacher’s hand still clutched a pistol trailing wisps of smoke.

  “The hell happened?” Courtright demanded as he came up to the scene of Lott’s demise.

  “An arrow,” Bishop said, pointing the muzzle of his Peacemaker while his eyes scanned the outer darkness.

  “Injuns?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Toby replied, knowing it didn’t take red hands to wield a bow. “I can’t see anybody yet.”

  Off to their left, a longhorn stood thirty feet or so apart from Mr. Dixon’s herd, head down and grazing. There was something dangling from around its neck and trailing on the grass, undoubtedly some kind of rope.

  Surprisingly, Lott’s gunshot hadn’t spooked the steers beyond causing the nearest ones to shift around a bit before they settled back to cropping grass.

  “Where did they get to?” Courtwright asked, as if Bishop should know.

  “Most likely that way.” Toby pointed with his Colt again, then reconsidered it with range in mind and swapped it for the Yellow Boy Winchester from his saddle boot.

  He still had nothing in the way of targets, but if one showed up at least he’d have a better chance of drilling it.

  More horsemen were approaching now, with Mr. Dixon in the lead and foreman Pickering hard on his heels. The boss craned from his saddle looking over Lott, then asked, “You men seen anything?”

  Courtwright was first to answer, letting Bishop off the hook. “Not yet, sir. Nothing but that steer standing apart. Looks like a rope around his neck.”

  “That tears it. Goddamn rustlers,” Pickering declared.

  “That arrow points to Comanches,” said Dixon. “Or it could be white trash hoping they can fake it.”

  “Either way, they’re murderers,” the foreman said.

  “And gone as far as I can tell. Bill, take some of these boys and scout around the herd right quick. Find out if anybody else came at ’em from another side and wasn’t noticed in the ruckus.”

  “Yes, sir! Odom, Thorne, Melville! With me!”

  The four of them rode off while Bishop and the rest waited for Dixon to pronounce his next order. Deke Sullivan was coming back on foot, leading the longhorn they had nearly lost, its tether dangling from one hand. “It’s plaited buckskin, Boss,” he said. “Looks more and more like redskins.”

  “All right,” Dixon replied. “Three of you fan out—Paco, Deke, and Whit. Try picking up
some kind of sign if you can manage in the dark. If not, we’ll try again at sunup.”

  “And what about the preacher?” Bishop asked.

  “We’ll plant him after breakfast. If we don’t turn up a clear-cut trail within an hour, we’ll move on. The sooner we can get away from here, the happier I’ll be.”

  * * *

  * * *

  TALL TREE RAN swiftly through the darkness, half a mile or more to reach the point where his raiders had left their tethered ponies. He arrived before the rest and watched them, looking disgusted with themselves and rightly so.

  “Old Owl, what happened?” he demanded. “You and Someone Found were closest to the shooting.”

  “The white man surprised us,” Old Owl said. “If there had been some warning—”

  “No excuses!” Tall Tree cut him off. “Could you not see him coming?”

  “Saw him, heard him,” Someone Found chipped in. “He was talking to himself, some kind of doo ‘áhályᾴᾳ da.” Meaning “idiot.”

  “But caught you anyway,” Tall Tree observed. “And fired a shot to bring the others running.”

  “I was faster,” Someone Found replied. “He fired his pistol falling, I believe already dead.”

  “So now they have an arrow,” Tall Tree countered. “If they recognize its markings they can name our tribe. Do you consider that a victory?”

  “The other choice was to be killed ourselves. Or else use Old Owl’s coach gun.”

  “The best choice,” their war chief reminded them, “was to obey my orders and avoid letting the white men see you.”

  “No one saw us,” Old Owl said, sounding disgruntled. “If the one did, he is silent now. None of the others had a chance.”

  “So, you consider this a victory?” Tall Tree inquired rhetorically. He moved on without giving either of them time to answer. “What of you, Bright Sun and Fire Maker?” he asked. “I see no steer with you.”