The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  * * *

  * * *

  BISHOP SAW MR. D returning from the back end of the herd, holding a good pace as he rode up toward the front rank of longhorns. From a distance he looked normal, but it would require one of those so-called mediums to probe his thoughts to know what he was thinking.

  Even lacking psychic powers, Bishop had a fair idea of what was going on inside the rancher’s head. A boss carried the weight of any enterprise, no matter how he delegated portions of authority to get things done. In the event of failure, Dixon would be hardest hit among them—not at all like Eastern bankers who could lose money and blame it on the government or on the New York Stock Exchange.

  Beyond a certain point in wealth, he realized, it might become damned near impossible to topple robber barons without killing them outright, but at the ranching level anything could happen—lousy weather or disease, wildfires and rustlers, price manipulation by big-city speculators, not to mention hostile Comanches—and men like Gavin Dixon took it in the neck.

  Cowboys might realize some measure of the weight their boss was shouldering, and they relieved a bit of that by being competent, but if a ranch went belly up, they could ride on to find someplace new and start from scratch. For someone with his life tied up in land and debt, stitched tight by pride, there would be no escape.

  For Bishop’s part, he had to focus on today and then tonight before he got around to thinking of tomorrow. Would the people who had tried stealing a few steers come back wanting more?

  That led him into second-guessing strangers he had never seen, an effort that he understood to be a futile exercise. Brigands of different races acted out of varied motives, simple greed aside, and there was no point trying to imagine what they’d do in any given situation, but for one.

  If cornered, most lawless types of any creed or color would defend themselves. Some might surrender but that wouldn’t be the rule of thumb. Whether they’d break off contact with the Dixon herd after their first attempt fell through was something else entirely, maybe caution winning over pure raw nerve.

  When they returned to try their luck again, if they came back, Bishop would play the hand that Fate had dealt to him. It could go one way if he was on watch, another way if he was caught napping.

  But any way it played, Toby would stand his ground and do his level best for Mr. Dixon and the Circle K. He’d signed a contract for the cattle drive’s duration, and for him, there was no backing out of that.

  And if he died trying . . . well, some might say that it was overdue.

  * * *

  * * *

  I AM NOT SURE that we can trust him,” said Iron Jacket, keeping his voice down.

  Riding beside him, with the other four some yards ahead of them, talking among themselves, Fire Maker asked, “Tall Tree?”

  “Our war chief,” Iron Jacket said, letting a measure of exasperation show. “Who else?”

  “He hates the whites as much as we do,” Fire Maker replied.

  “That’s true. But hate is not enough, unless he has ability to lead.”

  “The failure of our first attempt was not his fault.”

  “I do not claim it was,” Iron Jacket said, anxious to set aside establishment of blame. “But two more suns have passed, and all we do is watch.”

  “Awaiting time to strike,” Fire Maker said.

  “For how long, then? Another moon? Two? Will we let the whites and all their cattle slip away?”

  “He says they’re making for St. Louis.”

  “So? Suppose that’s true. The farther north we go, the greater risk we face of meeting farmers, even being sighted from one of their towns. More miles to bring the cattle back if we even succeed in taking them.”

  “It won’t be that long,” said Fire Maker.

  “Are you so sure?”

  “What would you do?” Fire Maker asked. He sounded nervous now.

  “You know the law,” Iron Jacket said. “One of us has the right to challenge him for leadership. It is our way. You’ve seen it done before.”

  Frowning, Fire Maker asked, “And who would do that?”

  Iron Jacket feigned a moment’s hesitation, then replied, “Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to fight him, brother.”

  They were not in fact related, but had both been raised together, nearly grown when the soldiers came and razed their village, killing everyone they loved. How they’d escaped was still a mystery, though Iron Jacket gave full credit to the Great Spirit for watching over them. The others in their small band had survived similar things and all refused to occupy one of the white man’s reservations while they aged and wasted into nothing.

  Stung by the remark, which cast doubt on his prowess, Fire Maker paused before responding. “What of them?” he asked, tilting his chin toward Old Owl, Someone Found, Great Leaper, and Bright Sun. “Suppose they don’t agree?”

  “We must consult with them first,” Iron Jacket said. “If they prefer Tall Tree and trust his leadership, of course, I would not challenge all of them.”

  “Because our band is small enough,” Fire Maker said, stating the obvious. “If we destroy it, anyone who does not die fighting will be alone against the whites.”

  “I have already spoken to Bright Sun,” Iron Jacket said. “He feels as we do.”

  “We?”

  Iron Jacket said, “I’ve only trusted you with this idea because I sense you feel the same. You would prefer to act, instead of following these white men and their stinking animals from one horizon to the next.”

  That much was true, but challenging Tall Tree to combat over leadership still struck Fire Maker as a grave, unnecessary risk. The more he thought about it, the more he saw the hazards that would make their plan more difficult.

  “What of the herd, then?” he inquired. “Do we just let it go? Has all this been a foolish waste of time?”

  “I won’t rush into anything,” Iron Jacket said. “To gain agreement from the others will require some time. I need to speak with each of them in turn, alone, to make sure none of them betrays us.”

  Us again, Fire Maker thought. He tries to make me an accomplice, without waiting for me to agree. “How long?” he asked.

  “Until we’ve crossed into Missouri, eh?” Iron Jacket said. “Another two, three days at most. If Tall Tree has no plan of action by that time, we need to make a change.”

  As if it were that easy, thought Fire Maker. As if we would ever be the same again.

  But he swallowed his doubts. “Three days,” he said. “If all the rest agree.”

  He hoped he had not just placed a target on his own back.

  * * *

  * * *

  IT WOULD BE another day or two before they passed the line into Missouri, crossing the invisible line that geographers called parallel 36°30' north. It meant nothing to Gavin Dixon, something that mapmakers had dreamed up to make a wild land seem all nice and orderly, but once that goal had been reached, they’d have another month, approximately, to complete their long northeastern slog.

  If Fate and Nature let them make it that far, anyway.

  He’d started looking forward to St. Louis, with its buyers waiting at the stockyards, to money in his pocket and paying off the drovers who would leave him there, but Dixon realized that was a risky way of thinking. Advance planning was mandatory, true enough, but as the boss he had to bear in mind the dangers still awaiting them as they traversed the next two hundred and ninety miles or so.

  The drive had been more costly than expected, as it stood. Seven men dead so far, and while he’d had a hand in killing five of them—all enemies who’d meant him harm—it weighed on Dixon’s soul. Beside that weight, the loss of steers so far seemed negligible, even at a going market rate of forty bucks per head. If they could keep their losses down over the next four weeks, say ten head overall, he still might
pocket close to eighty thousand dollars.

  Strike from that the cost of raising them—not much, around three thousand—and another thousand paying off the drovers for their time, and it would have been a good year for the Circle K. Then all he had to do was build another herd from scratch and do it all again this time next year.

  Thinking of salaries brought Graham Lott to mind, and eighty dollars Dixon wouldn’t have to shell out at trail’s end. The preacher had begun to grow on him, despite a tendency to run his mouth too much, but there was more to it than that.

  Each hand that Dixon lost during a drive—none in a great year; four men on the worst he’d ever had—was like a body blow that left him feeling vaguely sickened. Not his fault, of course, but theft and worse were always at the back of Dixon’s mind, a peril every rancher shared, contributing to gray hairs on his head and worry lines around his eyes.

  He hoped they’d get along with no more losses on the trail.

  And wondered why that felt like he was whistling past a graveyard in the dark.

  * * *

  * * *

  BY TOBY BISHOP’S estimate, the night’s campsite lay roughly twenty miles south of Missouri’s border, now within their reach inside of two, perhaps three days, depending on the trail. Another month or so, that was, and no end to potential risks ahead of them, whether or not the raiders who had murdered Graham Lott came back to try their luck a second time.

  And was it wrong that Bishop hoped they would return, giving him another shot at them?

  Was it irrational, this feeling that he owed Lott something, for the jaundiced view Bishop had held of him, however well concealed from Lott himself?

  Or had he just, unconsciously, become the kind of man who could not only cope with violence, but sometimes welcomed it?

  Taking the supper plate that Rudy Knapp held out for him, Bishop decided that he didn’t feel like harboring such doubts about himself. He wasn’t proud of his participation in the Mason County war, but it had been a paying job and he’d believed that he was on the righteous side when he signed up. Later, when he’d begun to doubt himself and the entire crusade, he’d gotten out, hoping he hadn’t stayed around so long that he could never clear the stains left on his soul.

  And then, there were the worst times, when it didn’t really bother him at all.

  Like back in Willow Grove.

  Estes Courtwright had asked him something, Bishop realizing that he hadn’t heard a word of it.

  “Sorry,” he said. “What’s that, again?”

  “You really must be looking forward to them beans,” said Courtwright, with a grin. “I asked about them redskins, whether it was troubling you, them maybe coming back at us.”

  “Something to think about,” Bishop replied.

  “But has it got you worried? Me, I’m worried and I won’t deny it.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I’ve seen what happens when the savages are done with people, when they have a chance to take their time with it. If anybody asks, I’d have to say that preacher caught a lucky break.”

  “I doubt he’d see it that way,” Bishop said.

  “I don’t mean dying. I mean by dying quick. Before they had a chance to really work him on him, you know?”

  “I’d just as soon not dwell on it,” said Bishop.

  “Right. It’s bound to make a person queasy. Just forget I brought it up.”

  And saying that, Estes attacked his pork and beans with gusto, showing no signs of a troubled appetite.

  Seated to Bishop’s right, Deke Sullivan spoke up, not pausing first to clear his mouth of semi-masticated food. “I haven’t slept right since the raid. Planting the preacher didn’t sit right with me. If we get another shot at whoever done that, I wouldn’t rightly mind.”

  “Injuns, I tell you,” Courtwright said, talking across Bishop. “Damned heathens. What they done to Custer and his boys, hell, I don’t even wanna think about it.”

  Hasn’t put you off your feed, though, Bishop thought, but kept it to himself.

  Instead, he offered, “Maybe not the best time to be bringing all that up.”

  “Just saying. I plan to be ready when they come.”

  And that, thought Bishop, was the best that any of them could hope for.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DAY TWENTY-FIVE FELT like the rest preceding it, few differences that Bishop could detect offhand since they had crossed into the Show-Me State. It felt like riding into Mexico from Texas, with the landscape pretty much what he’d been seeing since he tried his luck in Indian country.

  The major difference was reservations.

  While the territory they had just departed was consumed by them, Missouri kept the land supposedly reserved for Indians spread out and broken up in smaller parcels, mostly scattered through the state’s southeastern quadrant. There’d been no major conflict between white and red men since the Osage War of 1837, and even that was provoked by raiding parties out of Arkansas and Kansas rather than by natives of Missouri who had settled on their own preserves.

  Bishop was hoping that the Circle K’s trail drive wouldn’t upset four decades of relations that most folk would classify as peaceable, but heading trouble off would have to rest in someone else’s hands.

  Their first full day of travel on Missouri soil had gone all right so far, passing a few miles east of one small town while Mel Varney rode in trailing a packhorse to acquire supplies. He’d managed that without a hitch, despite a taint of liquor on his breath when he’d returned, and Mr. Dixon hadn’t chided him for that where any of the other hands could hear.

  Bishop supposed they’d all have had a drink or three by now if given half a chance.

  With fresh supplies on hand, supper added some rice to the expected pork and beans, with fried potatoes on the side. They washed it down with coffee, as per usual, then Bishop started getting ready for his shift on watch, the first roundup with Paco Esperanza and Deke Sullivan.

  It was a clear, warm evening so far, with no clouds to speak of threatening rain overnight. Each day that they put another nine or ten more miles behind them, Bishop thought their odds improved of shaking off the raiders who’d killed Graham Lott.

  The rub was working out how Bishop felt about that fact.

  The smart thing, he’d decided, was to set his mind on never knowing who had fired the lethal arrow when Lott caught them rustling. If the thieves never returned to try again, there’d be no justice for them, rough or otherwise.

  And Toby reckoned he could live with that.

  Not like it, true enough, but live with it.

  And truth be told, how often did a man break even in this life, much less come out ahead?

  Wherever he had wandered since the day he’d run away from home, the people Bishop had encountered were roughly divided into categories—two or three at most, depending on the time and place. First thing, you had the upper crust: your politicians, judges, well-off merchants, big-time ranchers, and the like.

  The second tier consisted of people who served the first-class crowd, including lawmen in that number, since they followed orders from the ones who’d given them their jobs and paid their meager salaries. Steal chickens from a country farmer and you might wind up in jail. But ride off with a rich man’s horse and you’d more likely be the guest of honor at a necktie party.

  Then, dwelling at the lower reaches of society were all the rest: drifters and odd-job workers, gamblers, whores and town drunks, not to mention outright thieves and murderers. If what Bishop had read in newspapers was true, Missouri had more than its share of those, including remnants of the old James-Younger gang who’d returned home after they’d been shot all to hell at Northfield, Minnesota; Sam Starr and his wife, Belle; Bill Doolin; and a host of others spawned by border fighting that had turned into the Civil War.

  None were averse to
stealing livestock if the opportunity arose, but Bishop guessed they’d rather rob a bank, stagecoach, or train than match guns with a bunch of men who were counting on a herd’s delivery to make ends meet.

  And there were lawmen in Missouri, if you caught one when he wasn’t tied up running errands for whichever top dog bossed his bailiwick. Avoiding towns along their route of march, however, made the badges few and far between.

  Which meant, as usual, that Bishop and the other hands would have to look out for themselves.

  * * *

  * * *

  TALL TREE INTENDED for the cattle raid to go ahead tonight. Surveillance of the longhorn herd grew tiresome over time, and thanks to Someone Found, he knew about Iron Jacket’s plan to challenge him as war chief if he did not execute the mission soon.

  After that was done, if they succeeded, he would have to face the would-be traitor in his own small band.

  Dissension could destroy a group of any size—whole tribes had been disrupted in that way, as he knew all too well—but in a smaller, close-knit party it was even more corrosive.

  Tall Tree had no reason to believe the others had already turned against him. They might have overpowered him with ease, acting together, but their sense of honor would demand another leader to assert himself and best Tall Tree in personal combat before they followed him wholeheartedly.

  Tonight’s work should solve that problem, weaken Iron Jacket’s resolve, and give Tall Tree the chance to deal with him before Iron Jacket made his move. That changed the nature of life-threatening surprise and turned it back upon his enemy.

  Raising a cupped hand to his lips, Tall Tree mimicked a whippoorwill’s call. An answer returned from the darkness, affirming receipt of his order to close on the herd and begin.

  Tonight, there would be no half measures, no attempts to lead a single steer away, not even three or four.