Stampede

by Len Levinson

  Cassandra hitched up her gunbelt and walked across the campsite, her cowboy hat slanted low over her eyes. She came to a stop at the edge of the grave, and saw the segundo lying beside it, his boots still on, the dog licking his purple face.

  The cowboys took off their hats and bowed their heads. Cassandra looked at the segundo. He’d been a dirty rotten son of a bitch. She couldn’t say anything good about him.

  “Dear Lord, please accept this man, Sylvester Braswell, into Your loving care. He was a reliable cowboy. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust—the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” She looked at Truscott. He nodded to the cowboys, and they picked up the segundo by his hands and ankles, swung him over the hole, and let him go. He landed with a horrible crunch, and the vaquero Diego shoveled the earth on him as the dog stood at the edge of the grave and watched his master disappear beneath scoops of earth. Cassandra turned to the chuck wagon, and hoped she wouldn’t have to do this for John Stone.

  “Time to move out, ma’am.”

  The grave was a pile of stone with a cross in the middle. The dog lay at the foot of the grave and refused to leave. Cassandra placed her foot in the stirrup and lifted herself up.

  They rode away from the grave, and Ephraim drove the chuck wagon, heading toward the herd. After fifty yards, they heard a terrible muffled scream behind them. They turned around in their saddles. The dog stared at the grave, his body trembling violently.

  They heard the scream again, and it made Cassandra’s blood curdle in her veins. She looked toward Truscott, and he peered at the grave, an expression of confusion and doubt on his face. Again the sound issued forth, a mournful wail that rent the vast stillness of the prairie, and the dog howled eerily, his nose pointed at the sky.

  Truscott pulled his reins, but his horse whinnied and raised its front hooves in the air, refusing to go toward the grave. Truscott put the spurs to him again, and the horse still wouldn’t move forward.

  The other horses were likewise spooked, their ears pointed straight up and whining sounds erupting from their throats. Truscott jumped to the ground and advanced staunchly toward the grave, gun in hand. “Git the shovel!”

  A hoarse shriek emanated from the grave, and everybody stopped in their tracks. The rocks were undulating, as if the segundo were trying to fight his way out of the ground. The dog danced about crazily, howling and barking, snapping his teeth at the air. Cowboys threw the rocks off the grave, then dropped to their hands and knees and clawed at the dirt.

  Moans and yelps came from the earth buckling and churning beneath their hands. An agonized screech arose from the ground, followed by an explosion of dirt into the air. A hand appeared out of the grave, and a second later a head covered with dirt could be seen.

  The segundo sat up in his grave. Slowly he raised his head, his eyes opened, and a strange nasal snort came out of his mouth. The dog trembled, eyes bugging out of his head. Everybody stepped back. The segundo snorted and leaned from side to side as his unblinking eyes roved the circle of cowboys and vaqueros around him. He stared blankly at Ephraim for a few moments, then pressed his hands against the ground and raised himself up.

  The segundo was covered with dirt, his face had no life, and flesh hung loosely on his bones. “Unnh,” he said, and turned slowly toward Truscott. “Unnh.”

  The dog looked at the segundo, a terrible choking sound erupting from the dog’s mouth. Then, with a fearful wail, the dog turned and ran away from the campsite. The cowboys stared at the terrified creature as it disappeared into the endless wastes of Texas.

  Truscott gazed mystified at the spot where the dog had gone, then turned to the segundo, standing stiffly, covered with dirt. Truscott had seen a white buffalo once a long time ago, but never anything like this.

  “Wrangler, get this man a horse!”

  They didn’t know if the segundo were alive, dead, or somewhere in between. Slipchuck glanced at Ephraim, and Ephraim’s face was a block of cold ebony. The segundo’s chest heaved as he sucked in large quantities of fresh prairie air, and his arms hung loosely down his sides. Cassandra couldn’t tear her eyes from him. He’d risen from the grave like a monster or a ghost, but his old swaggering self was gone. This was a meek hulking creature with no will of his own.

  Truscott cleared his throat. “Braswell—from now on you’ll ride the drag.”

  “Unnh.”

  The wrangler returned with an extra horse, climbed down from his saddle, and led the extra horse to the segundo, who stepped forward woodenly and took the reins. The segundo raised himself jerkily into the saddle, and sat hatless in the sun, staring at the horizon.

  “Vacation’s over,” Truscott growled to him. “Git to work.”

  ~*~

  An hour later the herd was moving north again, a dead man riding the drag, and before them stretched endless plains, mesas, and valleys, with thin transparent clouds scudding across the blue sky.

  But the sky didn’t look so blue on the drag, where clouds of dust kicked up by thousands of hooves billowed about the riders, obscuring their vision.

  Cassandra sat on her horse, breathing through the red bandanna over her mouth and nose, watching cows and steers. They were the same ones every day, and each had his or her special quirks, as Cassandra and her horse rode back and forth behind them, forcing laggards to stay with the others.

  Occasionally the segundo would appear out of the rolling clouds of dust, riding his horse. He sat loosely in his saddle, was covered with dirt, and seemed more beast than man. Cassandra shuddered whenever she saw him.

  ~*~

  Stone was returning from Comanche ghost land, floating through a vast cold sea of darkness. He didn’t know who or where he was, where he’d been, or where he was going. He was just a faint glimmer of consciousness in the infinity of time.

  Sometimes he lost what little consciousness he had, and there’d be endless nothingness. The chuck wagon rolled over the prairie, and he rocked from side to side amid the skillet, grill, stewpot, and other utensils of the culinary arts, as the spirit of a raging bear growled over him.

  Ephraim sat on the high seat, the reins in his hands, and looked back at Stone periodically, but Stone was always the same, lifeless and pale, covered with ridges of dry blood. Ephraim had been one of the first to arrive at the stream the previous night, and seen the bear deliver the final wallop that sent Stone flying.

  It was a blow that would’ve killed most other men, and Ephraim remembered their clash in San Antone, when he’d hit Stone with his best punches, and Stone’d kept fighting. Now he had Stone at his mercy, but it’d give him no pleasure to simply slit Stone’s throat. He wanted to defeat him in toe-to-toe combat, so Stone would know who was the better man.

  Stone groaned softly, and Ephraim turned around. “You’ll pull through,” Ephraim said through clenched teeth, “and then you’ll be mine.”

  ~*~

  A wave of unbearable agony swept over Stone, and all he could do was moan deep in his throat. He was roasting alive, his skin crackling, bones melting, guts bursting. He wanted to escape, but couldn’t get away. The suffering was all-engulfing, like a sea of torment that dropped on a man and never washed away.

  Occasionally it became too intense, and he fainted from its incessant pressure. He had no will, no concept, only blackness, but then the pain would draw him to dim awareness again, and he’d wallow in it, unable to rise.

  He alternated between total blackout and faint consciousness for the rest of the day, and at night, after the herd had bedded down, the cowboys carried him out of the chuck wagon and lay him in the open air. Cassandra knelt beside him and gazed at his waxen features. She touched her sweaty palm to his forehead, and it was like a furnace.

  “That’s good,” Truscott said. “Kill the infection. Listen, you and me gotta have a talk.”

  Cassandra followed Truscott into the darkness on the other side of the chuck wagon. “I can’t run this spread by myself,” he said. “We need a new segundo. Usually, the way
it works is I make my recommendations to the boss, and the boss makes the decision, you want to work it that way?”

  “Who do you recommend?”

  “Either Maldonado or Luke Duvall. Offhand I’d say Duvall, because he’s a white man, but Maldonado owned his own ranch down by the Nueces, and prob’ly knows cattle better.”

  “If Maldonado knows cattle better, he gets the job.”

  “Should I tell ’im, or do you want to?”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  She washed her hands and face in the basin, dried herself with the dirty communal towel, and saw Don Emilio approach from the direction of the campfire. Flames aureoled behind his stocky figure, and he had a black mustache over flashing white teeth.

  “You wanted to see me, señora?”

  “I’ve spoken with the ramrod, and we want you to take Braswell’s job. Pays ten dollars more a month. Report to Truscott, and he’ll tell you what to do.”

  “I know what to do, señora. I have owned more cattle than you ever dreamed of.”

  Cassandra looked at him, and he projected fierce masculine pride. His hair was thick and straight, parted to the side, and three buttons of his shirt were undone, showing his powerful chest. A confident expression was on his face, and his eyes were pulling down her jeans.

  “We need your experience, Don Emilio. We still have a long way to go before Abilene.”

  “I am your slave, señora.”

  ~*~

  Cassandra awakened as the first ray of dawn peeked over the rolling hills to the east of the campsite. She gingerly lifted her boots and slapped them a few times to get rid of possible deadly creatures. Then she walked toward the chuck wagon, where Stone lay on the ground.

  He still was out; she touched her hand to his brow. It was like a rock in the hot sun, and he looked slimmer, as if his musculature were burning up in the heat. It’d be a terrific loss if he died, he was so young, and went through five years of war only to be killed in a mindless encounter with a bear. Between the Indians and wild animals, there was no time to be as lackadaisical as Stone must’ve been when he’d walked into the bear. It was a lesson he’d never forget, if he lived to learn it. The next twenty-four hours would tell the story.

  Cassandra and the men ate their usual breakfast of fried steaks, and were on the trail at five o’clock in the morning. A thick layer of gray clouds covered the sky, and it looked like rain. The first drops fell at ten, and by noon the trail had become a sea of mud.

  No longer was there a cloud of dust on the drag, and the cattle slowed to a crawl. One old bull sat and refused to move, and Cassandra climbed down from her saddle, took her coiled lasso in hand, and beat his rump, but he wouldn’t budge.

  The segundo rode toward her on his horse, and looked down at the bull. He hadn’t bathed since coming out of the ground, and dirt on his body was streaked by rain. He jumped to the ground, worked his arms under the bull’s body, and lifted the bull off the mud, an act of inhuman strength. Then he kicked the bull viciously, and the bull bellowed, running back to the drag.

  Cassandra watched the segundo walk stiffly to his horse and climb aboard. He rode away, to search for the next recalcitrant animal, and Cassandra scratched her head. He wasn’t living and he wasn’t dead, but he was the best cowboy she had. She remounted her horse and hit the spurs. The horse plodded through the rain, and Cassandra could hear drops of water falling on the hood of her oilskin poncho.

  The rain diminished in late afternoon, and in the evening they camped beside another stream. Truscott had shot an antelope earlier in the day, and Ephraim fried antelope steaks. They ate around the campfire, too tired to speak.

  Cassandra was filthy and sweaty, and wanted to bathe in the stream, but didn’t know how to do it. Somehow she had to figure out a way to wash safely, without cowboys ogling her. They couldn’t be trusted, and probably laughed among themselves at her predicament. They only respected loaded guns pointed at their faces, so that’s what she’d give them.

  She finished supper, and found the carcass of the antelope. Ephraim had cut off the creature’s head, and it lay in the grass on the far side of the chuck wagon, where lobos stared at it from behind a prickly pear cactus, but Cassandra didn’t know they were there. She picked up the gory head and carried it to a boulder four feet high at the edge of the campsite, where all could see it.

  Then she returned to the campfire, faced them, and said, “I’m going to take a bath, and I’ll need four guards. Do I have any volunteers?”

  Every man, except Ephraim, raised his hand.

  Cassandra picked Slipchuck, Blakemore, Diego, and Pedro, and they rose to their feet, smiling happily at the prospects that lay ahead.

  “Two of you’ll be on the far side of the stream,” she said, dropping her voice into the lower registers, “and two on the near side. Your backs will be to me at all times, because you’re supposed to be watching for Indians, bears, and whatever in hell else might be out there. If I see any man looking at me, this is what’ll happen to him.”

  She pulled her gun, raised the barrel, and took aim at the antelope’s skull. Her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth, she pulled the trigger. Her gun flashed, the report echoed, and the antelope’s head split like a rotten watermelon.

  Cassandra blew smoke from the end of her gun barrel. “If you don’t think you can handle the job, say so now.”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Let’s get it over with,” she told them, dropping her gun into its holster.

  She picked up her towel, shredded by two stampedes, and headed toward the stream, followed by her four guards, who, though they’d promised not to look, managed to take quick glances out of the corners of their eyes as she bathed, and they expected a bullet at any moment. But not even the promise of lead could stop an honest cowboy.

  ~*~

  Stone looked worse in the morning. His breathing was practically nonexistent and he was still as a corpse. He’s going to die, she thought. No doubt about it.

  Cassandra bent over and kissed his hot forehead, and the odor of death clung to his dark blond hair. She ran her fingers through it, and came upon a big scab.

  “Keep a close eye on him,” she said to Ephraim. “He looks awful bad.”

  “Leave him to me,” Ephraim said.

  Cassandra walked back to her horse and raised herself into the saddle. She wheeled her horse and rode to Truscott’s side at the head of the cowboy crew returning to the herd.

  “How far you think we are from that town?” Cassandra asked.

  “Maybe two days.”

  “I don’t think John Stone’ll make it.”

  “Never been on a drive where somebody din’t git killed.”

  Cassandra could hear the chuck wagon bouncing and creaking over the uneven terrain. In New Orleans there’d been hundreds of doctors, and even San Antone had several. Never had she been in a situation where there was no doctor within a reasonable distance. On the prairie nothing seemed within reach, except death.

  They approached the edge of the herd, and Diego was guarding a cow who’d given birth to a calf during the night. How beautiful, Cassandra thought as she rode closer. The calf was dark brown like its mother, standing on spindly legs, sucking its mother’s teat.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Truscott said, lowering himself to the ground. “Git that cow back to the herd.”

  Truscott grabbed the calf and pulled it away from its mother. The calf bawled in surprise, and its mother mooed angrily. Diego rode his horse toward the mother and whapped her in the face with his lasso. Another cowboy slapped her haunch. The mother tried to join her crying calf, but the cowboys beat her off and pushed her toward the herd. Truscott advanced toward the calf and pulled his six-gun.

  “What’re you going to do?” Cassandra asked.

  “Shoot ’im,” Truscott said matter-of-factly, aiming his gun at the quivering newborn creature.

  Cassandra jumped down from her horse and ran toward him, and he turned, his
brow wrinkled with confusion.

  “What the hell’s botherin’ you this time?”

  “You’re not going to kill that calf, Truscott!”

  “We can’t take it with us, because it’ll slow down the herd, and if I don’t kill it, the coyotes will. How’d you rather die, Mrs. Boss Lady—a quick bullet in the head or get torn apart by coyotes?”

  He raised his gun and drew a bead on the bleating calf, while in the distance the cries of its mother could be heard. Cassandra rushed forward and grabbed Truscott’s wrist. The gun fired, exploding a patch of dirt beside the calf.

  Truscott turned to Cassandra, and his eyes were popping out of his head. “I knowed the first day I seen you I should’ve walked the other way! You don’t know nothin’, and you’re always in my goddamn road!”

  His face red with rage, he threw his hat vehemently to the ground. Cassandra knelt beside the calf and wrapped her arms around its neck. It was a baby, trembling against her body. Truscott picked up his hat, whacked it against his knee, and pulled it on his head.

  “You got three choices,” he said. “We can stop the herd until this calf can travel, prob’ly two to three weeks. You can leave the mother with the calf, and the coyotes’ll git ’em both. Or you can shoot the goddamn calf. When you make up yer so-called mind, tell me what you want.” He walked to his horse and climbed into the saddle. “What the hell’re you men lookin’ at! You got a job to do—so git ridin’!”

  Cassandra hugged the frightened calf as the cowboys whooped and hollered, getting the herd into motion. The cattle protested noisily, and the pitiful cries of the mother still could be heard.

  “Now, now,” she said to the calf, trying to comfort it. If she hadn’t interfered with Truscott, the calf would be dead and the issue over and done with. She grit her teeth in frustration, while the calf tried feebly to join its mother. It was still damp with birthing fluids. I can’t kill it, she thought.

  She pinched her lips together and drew her Colt. The calf gazed at her with big innocent eyes, and she aimed at its head, grit her teeth, and pulled the trigger. The explosion echoed across the prairie, and the calf’s head was blown apart, blood and brains all over the grass. Cassandra felt light-headed and numb as she rose to her feet. God forgive me.