A Vast and Desolate Land

by Robert Peecher

  Rab walked to the fire and used the burning end of a stick from the fire to light the tobacco in his pipe. Then he turned back to the others.

  "Either way, if I don't have Cossatot Jim it don't make no difference us talking about it. If I ain't got him, I can't turn him over to the Comanche, and this is all just talk for talk's sake. So even before we decide what to do, we need to find Cossatot Jim."

  Rab puffed on his pipe.

  "I hired y'all to drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Las Vegas. What I'm talking about now is something different from that. So no man has to take any part of it if he don't want. We don't have provisions enough for an extra week out here on the Llano Estacado. We're nine days from Las Vegas, five or six of those days are on the Staked Plains. My gal back at my ranch, Evangeline, she's due to start toward us with fresh supplies, but she probably won't meet us until we're almost back to my ranch.

  "Carlos, I need you to take Miguel, Jorge, and Sancho, and keep the cattle moving toward Las Vegas. Meet Evangeline and go with her and whoever she brings to help, and get these cattle back to my ranch. We can't stop the drive to go hunting for Cossatot Jim. The cattle need water and good forage, and we'll lose too much of the herd if we don't keep them going. At this point I ain't too concerned about bandits or rustlers. And we've found the Indian troubles I was worried about. Anyone who doesn't want a part in what I'm planning should ride on with Carlos.

  "The rest of you, if you'll stay with me and Kuwatee, we'll take provisions from Sancho's wagon and go looking for Cossatot Jim. We'll spread out and cover as much ground as we can. I've never in all my life seen a place as easy to get lost in as this enormous emptiness. We might not find him. And if we don't, then there's no choice but to try to fight the Comanche to try to get Caleb Morgan back."

  "And if we do find him," O'Toole said, "we just give him over to the Comanche?"

  Rab shrugged. "That's where my mind is. I understand your objections to it. But if the choice is to let the Comanche have Cossatot Jim or let the Comanche have Caleb, my thinking is that the one earned what he'll get and the other did nothing wrong."

  The men stood silently. Each one had his thoughts on what Rab was suggesting. None of them liked it.

  "If it was a white woman, we'd turn him over to a white judge," Rab said. "And that judge would hang him for what he done, and none of us would give it a second thought. Roasting a man on a fire is a bit different than hanging him — I'll grant you that. But there's no other difference that I can see."

  Vazquez crossed his arms and looked at the ground.

  "Here's what I'll say, Rab, and I say it as a man who made his living wearing a badge. If the man did what the Comanche say he did, I don't have a problem handing him over to get what he deserves. I especially don't have a problem handing him over if that's what it takes to save Caleb. I'll ride with you."

  O'Toole nodded his head at Vazquez's words. "I do have a problem handing a white man over to Comanche justice. It ain't right. But I had a feeling not to let the boy go after that sorrel by himself, and I reckon I have some blame in his getting captured. And if it comes to a fight with the Comanche to get Caleb back, I ain't going to leave you short-handed."

  Everyone looked now to Fitz, the Union cavalryman who rode under Custer at Gettysburg. In his face Rab could see that the man was opposed to handing over a white man to Comanche justice, but he struggled with his dedication to his outfit.

  "Look here, Fitz," Rab Sinclair said, and he let him off the hook. "Somebody has to ride along with Carlos and the herd to keep the remuda. Those of us who are staying will take two hawsses a piece so we have a spare mount, but that leaves a passel of hawsses still to be looked after. You ride with the herd, watch the hawsses, and that gives Carlos one more gun in case he runs into trouble. You'll do that for me?"

  Fitz nodded. He knew that Rab understood his dilemma. Fitz just couldn't bring himself to turn a white man over to the Comanche. Torture was far different from hanging.

  "I'll do that, Rab. No hard feelings?"

  "None," Rab said. "You're doing what I'm asking you to do to earn your wages. Can't be hard feelings over that."

  "What about me?"

  From the back of the covered wagon, Skinner Jake was listening to the conversation.

  "You keep your head inside that wagon and don't let the Comanche knew you exist."

  Kuwatee now joined them, having dealt with the horses.

  "Any idea how you plan to find a needle in a haystack?" the half-breed asked.

  "Quickly," Rab said.

  ***

  "You tell me what happened, and you tell me every bit of it," Rab said, his teeth gritted. "Right now them Comanche don't know you're alive. But that can change. It wouldn't take much at all for me to decide to drag you up to them Comanche and get my friend back. They don't know the difference 'tween you and Cossatot Jim. I could have my friend back right now, and don't forget it."

  Though his throat was still dry and cracked, Skinner Jake swallowed hard.

  "I'll tell you," he said.

  "About a month ago we left out of Texas and come into the Staked Plains. We'd heard they was buff up here, and plentiful."

  "You find any?"

  "Some. We had a few skins. Not much. We found sign of them coming through, but we think maybe we was too late to get the big herds."

  "But you found something else?"

  Skinner Jake nodded.

  "We set up a camp, and each day we scouted out in different directions, hoping to see some sign or run across a herd. If we found a herd, we was to all meet back at the camp and then set off after them as a group. You see?"

  "I see," Rab said.

  "So Cossatot Jim, and another couple of fellows, Abe Jones and Chubby Tollman, they rode off to the south a ways. When they come back, Cossatot Jim was grinnin' like the devil, like he'd caught the cat by the tail. Well, me and Chubby Tollman was pretty tight, on account of knowin' each other before we come together with this outfit. We'd worked together skinnin' buff for two seasons in a row. So we was like friends. You see?"

  "Yes," Rab said.

  "That night Chubby told me all about what happened. Cossatot and them come up on a spring down in a canyon, and a little pool there, too. First fresh water any of us had seen in days. So the three of them stripped down and jumped in. You know how it is — cool off, enjoy the water a bit. So they're in that pool, when all of a sudden this Comanche squaw woman and a couple of her children come along. Cossatot and Abe, they grabbed her and the children. Chubby told them not to, but they done it anyway. Then they set Chubby to watch the children and they had their way with the woman. You know what I mean?"

  "I know what you mean," Rab said.

  "Well, while they're so engaged, one of the children goes to run. Gets away from Chubby. And Abe Jones, he shot the boy as he ran. The squaw woman, she went to pitchin' a fit, and Cossatot Jim gutted her there by the pool. Chubby wouldn't let them hurt the other child, and they turned that one loose when they left."

  Skinner Jake took a drink from a canteen.

  As Rab stood at the back of the wagon, the chill of dusk hit him with the breeze. The others were bedding down or mounting up for the night watch. It was a disappointment to him that this cattle drive had taken a turn. Up until today, the thing had been moving along pretty well. Even the stolen horse didn't bother him that much. But now Rab was feeling the weight of a life in his hands. Several lives, truthfully. The Comanche might at any time decide to attack. If they saw Skinner Jake, Rab felt it was a certainty.

  "After that, for two or three days we kept seeing Comanche stalking us out on the plains. Chubby Tollman only told me what happened. He didn't tell anyone else, and I didn't say a word, neither. And Cossatot and Abe, neither of them breathed a word. So the others warn't prepared for it. They saw them Comanche and figured they was just watching to see what we were up to. But I figured different. I didn't think they'd attack the whole body the way they did, though. I thought maybe
they'd come after us one at a time. So I stayed close to camp. And then they came on and attacked. It was a massacre."

  "I saw what it was," Rab said.

  Sinclair could not muster sympathy for the buffalo hunters. Even the ones who were innocent were still guilty of keeping bad company. A man was no better than the outfit he rode with, at least in Rab Sinclair's mind. And that's why he was always careful about the men he called friends. He didn't have to wonder if Fitz or O'Toole or Vazquez or Miguel or Jorge or any of the others would provoke the Comanche in such a way.

  "Tell me about Cossatot Jim. Where will he go?"

  "Out here?" Skinner Jake said. "I can't tell you. It's not like there's a place to go out here. Where would you go?"

  Rab nodded. "I reckon if I was him, I'd go the fastest way out of here I could find. I'd make for the closest town."

  "That's what I would do," Skinner Jake said. "You found him west of where we was attacked?"

  "Pretty far west," Rab said.

  "He's making for New Mexico Territory," Skinner Jake said.

  "And he's got a full day on us, with a good hawss," Rab said. Now he was talking to himself more than to Skinner Jake. "A full day and a good hawss. If he rode directly west of here, he could be to the Pecos River in four days. Maybe three if he abuses my hawss."

  "Which he would," Skinner Jake said.

  "I reckon that gnaws on me as much as any of this. I don't like for my hawsses to be mistreated. I'll get Caleb out of this one way or t'other, but I don't know if I can save my hawss."

  Rab gave Skinner Jake a hard look.

  "The only way this gets worse for me is if them Comanche see you. So I'm telling you now, if you climb out of that wagon before you're told, I'll turn you over to them in exchange for that boy. You understand me?"

  "I ain't leaving this wagon," Skinner Jake said.

  "See that you don't."

  -12-

  By the break of dawn the outfit was on the move.

  Carlos, Miguel, and Jorge had the cattle started west again. Sancho was driving his wagon up ahead of the steers now.

  Fitz was in the back, pushing the spare mounts that were left to him.

  Rab Sinclair, Kuwatee, Vazquez, and O'Toole had picked out a mount and a spare, and they'd gotten together provisions to see them through a week. One of the spares carried Caleb's saddle. They were light on water.

  "My guess would be that Cossatot Jim rode off as straight west as he could go, which would put him to the southwest of us," Rab told the others.

  They split up with roughly a mile between each man. Rab was out on the far end of their line. Vazquez was a mile to his left. O'Toole was about a mile to the left of him. And three miles from where Rab rode, just a barely visible speck out on the horizon — and sometimes invisible behind a low hill or down in a swale — Kuwatee held the other far end of the line.

  The vast distances seemed impossible. The terrain never changed in any direction, even after the cattle disappeared from view. There was almost nothing to gauge time or distance by.

  A small rise far in front of them would sink to nothing as they approached it and never be seen again.

  They never saw a dry wash from any distance. It always seemed to just appear a hundred yards in front of them. And then they would pass it, and it would disappear just as fast.

  They hurried, because they had to, but they did not exhaust the horses or ride so hard that they might miss a trail or a sign that would lead them to Cossatot Jim.

  The monotony of it was maddening.

  O'Toole kept wanting to ride nearer to Vazquez to talk, but he knew he had to hold his position for fear that they might ride directly past some important track. So he talked to his horse or to himself.

  Vazquez caught himself dozing in the saddle. He would jerk back awake and have to take a moment to turn in the saddle to see if he might have ridden past something with his eyes closed.

  Kuwatee, though, was fine in the quiet loneliness of the Llano Estacado. He was a man who had spent much of his life alone, passing between two worlds without ever being completely welcome in either. A half-breed was forever ostracized by whites and Indians alike. He stood a better chance of acceptance among the tribes people, but they never completely accepted him. Living on Rab Sinclair's ranch was the first time in his life, at least the first time in a long time, where he felt there were people nearby he could call friends.

  The half-breed sometimes ate supper with Rab Sinclair and Evangeline. Many times he had joined Caleb at the young man's cabin.

  But he knew a life of loneliness, and so the loneliness of the expansive plain did not bother him. Kuwatee was at peace with where he was, wherever he was, because he had learned to accept all things.

  Rab Sinclair had with him his two favorite horses, the blue roan and the buckskin. He was mounted now on the buckskin, and he found that between them he had no lack of companionship.

  Sinclair loved to study the behavior of the horses.

  He understood an ear flick from the buckskin or a snort from the roan as well as he understood a man speaking English at him.

  "You don't give a care if this plain stretches all the way to the sun, do you hawss?" Rab said to the buckskin. This was a horse that loved to move, and the farther the better. There was nothing the buckskin hated worse than being left in a corral when other horses were getting saddled. And he was an easy riding horse. He seemed to always take his steps as easy as possible for whatever rider was on his back.

  At the ranch, Evangeline often used the buckskin because he was such a pleasant animal to ride.

  "Not like you, you old biter," Rab said to Cromwell.

  At the nickname, the jealous buckskin's black tipped ear turned. He knew when Rab was talking to the roan.

  "Come on now, they's plenty of conversation for all of us," Rab told the buckskin, patting it on its neck.

  The wind seemed to have let up a bit today, but it was still brutal. It blew steady, chapping every bit of skin it could find. Sand filled the corner of Rab's eyes. Every few miles he would rein in the buckskin, dismount, and pour a little water onto a cloth. He'd use that to wipe the horses' eyes and nostrils.

  Nothing about this godforsaken place was fit for man or beast.

  The sun baked. The wind beat. The ground provided almost nothing for sustenance. There was grass enough for the cattle if they kept the cattle moving, but water seemed always distant. The Llano Estacado proved to be earth at its rawest, most basic, where daily survival remained a constant question.

  Even with full canteens, Rab knew they would need to find water as soon as possible. The canteens needed to be refilled, and the horses would need to drink.

  He looked out across the wide plain to his left. With each man riding with a pack horse, even Kuwatee made a large enough target to be seen, as long as he was not below a hill or down in a swale.

  But Rab had to wonder if they would even see a sign of Cossatot Jim. If he made a camp four miles west of where they rode and left behind a fire pit, they might never see it.

  Sinclair pulled his hat from his head and waved it several times until all three of the other men returned the salute. Then he pointed with his hat off to the west, signaling to them that he was shifting their direction a bit westward.

  He laid the left rein on the buckskin's neck and it gently and subtly turned its direction, easing just a little farther off to the west.

  The morning sun seemed to anchor itself straight above them, and it seemed to stay hang for hours there at the top of its arc in the sky.

  When it finally began to drop to the west, it fell quickly. Noontime seemed to last too long, and the late afternoon seemed to turn to early evening much too quickly.

  Now, as the sky to the east began to turn dark, the other three men rode to where Rab was reining in his horses.

  ***

  "Nothing all day," O'Toole complained. "From morning to evening, I didn't see nothing but the same thing all day long."

&n
bsp; "It's too much space," Vazquez said. "We could be within a mile of his tracks and never know it."

  They would have no campfire. There was no point in it. They didn't carry with them skillets, and there wasn't wood to burn out here anyway. Rab would miss morning coffee, and he liked to have a hot meal to start the day. But it was jerky and some flat bread Sancho made up for them.

  "He's left a sign somewhere," Rab said. "A campfire. Hawss droppings. A clump of buckwheat his hawss munched on. Somewhere out here he has left a trail a blind man could follow, and we just have to pick up on it."

  "We have to pick up on it and get him back to the Comanche in four days," O'Toole said. "It might be time to start thinking about what other plans we have to rescue Caleb."

  Rab struck a match inside his hat and used it to light his pipe.

  "We keep this up one more day," Rab said. "If we camp tomorrow and haven't found a sign of Cossatot Jim, then we'll turn back after that and give some thought to how we get Caleb away from the Comanche without getting him and us all killed."

  Kuwatee unrolled his bedroll and stretched out inside it.

  "It may be that we have more luck if we ride separate," he said.

  "I don't like the idea of being out of sight of each other," Rab said. "The Comanche have already taken one man hostage. I ain't inclined to give them opportunity to take another."

  "Cover more ground," Kuwatee said.

  "Make ourselves an easier target," Rab said.

  "I'm with Rabbie on this one," O'Toole broke in. "If we split up and each ride alone, the Comanche can have us one at a time, easy as you please. It's too dangerous. They're likely to change the deal they made at any moment, anyway. We'd just be giving them a reason to do it."

  Kuwatee took a deep breath, relaxing and drifting off to sleep. "There are four of us. If Comanche decide to change deal, they will change whether we are together or not."