The Amarillo Trail

by Ralph Compton

  Perla stumbled away from the stove and ran out of the house. It was a short distance to the mission church and she ran like the wind as Jorge began to remove his brother’s clothing as he lay, his eyes closed, atop the kitchen table. He let the clothes fall into a heap, which his mother snapped up and hugged to her face as she breathed in the horrible scents clinging to the fibers.

  “Carlos, you help our mother while I dig his grave.”

  “I will help her,” Carlos said, dazed by both the sight of his naked brother’s body on the table and his mother’s sobbing into his brother’s clothes before she set them on the sideboard next to the sink.

  When he had finished taking off his brother’s boots, Jorge stepped outside, walked to the lean-to shed, and took one of the shovels in hand.

  Perla returned shortly, Padre Ernesto Delgado in tow, his cassock flapping as he tried to keep up with her. He carried a small satchel in one hand and a breviary in the other, his tricornered hat askew on his head. Streaks of gray hair streamed over a shiny bald spot.

  Jorge stopped digging and returned to the house to watch as Padre Delgado administered extreme unction. He and Carlos removed their hats and stood by with Perla and their mother in reverent silence as the priest intoned the Latin words. By then, Miguel’s body had been washed and his hair combed, still barefoot, but garbed in a clean freshly ironed shirt and clean trousers. Perla sobbed quietly as she leaned against Carlos, who had an arm around her. Jorge embraced his mother, who crossed herself and muttered a voiceless prayer as she looked down at her son’s dead face. Miguel looked as if he were asleep, but his skin was already darkening and his chest did not heave with breath.

  Padre Delgado made the sign of the cross on Miguel’s forehead and Jorge heard him say, in Latin, “In nomine patre, et filio, et spiritu sanctu,” as he bent over his brother in what seemed to be a final farewell.

  “May God have mercy on his soul,” Padre Delgado said in Spanish as he stepped away from the table.

  “Will you say words over him when we place him in his grave?” Esperanza said to Delgado.

  “I will do that.”

  “Come with me, Carlos,” Jorge said. “We will finish digging the grave of our brother.”

  Carlos got another shovel from the lean-to and the two men finished digging around midmorning when the sun was high and beating down on their sweating bodies. They left the shovels and walked back to the house.

  “We are ready,” he told Delgado and his mother. Perla was in one of the bedrooms, still sobbing in disbelief that another of her brothers was dead.

  “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” Padre Delgado reminded the small assemblage in his short funeral oration. He spoke in Spanish, and they all knew that phrase from the Bible. He reached down and picked up a handful of dirt and let it trickle from his fingers onto the blanket-wrapped body of Miguel. “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust . . . ,” he said, and at the end, made the sign of the cross over the grave.

  “I am so sorry, Esperanza,” he said. “God will give you the strength you need to overcome your grief.”

  “Thank you, Padre,” Esperanza said.

  Her sons began to shovel dirt onto the corpse. The dirt hit the blanket with soft swishing sounds until both Perla and her mother turned away and consoled each other as they both began to weep.

  “I will say the rosary for Miguel,” Esperanza said. “And I will make lunch for us. Come inside when you have finished and put your horses away.”

  “Yes, Mama,” both men said in unison, and continued to fill up the grave, their shirts plastered to their bodies with boiling salty sweat.

  At lunch, Jorge told his mother how Miguel came to be shot and killed. He told her of how he, Miguel, and Carlos had scattered Doc Blaine’s cattle and Carlos said he had shot two of them when he was riding away.

  “When we did not see Miguel, we went back and found him,” Jorge said.

  “Do you know who shot him?”

  “I think it was Blaine. But I was a long way from where it happened, so I could not tell for sure.”

  “He must pay,” Esperanza said. “The old man Blaine must pay for what he has done.”

  “We do not know where he is, Mama,” Carlos said. “We think he was taking the cattle to the ranch of his son. Maybe to Perryton.”

  “He will return,” Esperanza said. “You must take away from him what is most precious to him. Just as he took the lives of two of my sons.”

  “We do not know what is most precious to him,” Carlos said.

  “Perhaps his own sons,” his mother said.

  “One of the sons, the one called Miles, he has a wife,” Jorge said.

  “Ah, he can get another wife. You must make the old man Blaine pay. He is the one who must pay.”

  “How?” Jorge asked.

  She looked at both sons and reached across the table. She placed one hand on Jorge’s hand and the other on Carlos’s hand. She smiled wanly.

  “That you must decide for yourself,” she said. “You will know when the time comes. You will know.”

  “What about what the padre said?” Carlos asked as his mother took her hands away. “About vengeance.”

  “Ah, the vengeance,” she said. “And how does the Lord work? He works through His people, through you and me. It is the Lord’s vengeance, but you must be His hand on this earth, in this life. You must do the work of the Lord, my sons. He will bless you and I will be grateful if you do this.”

  “We will do it, Mama,” Jorge said. “We will make the old man, Blaine, pay for what he has done.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said, “you will get a cross and have the sign painter put the name of Miguel on it.”

  “To be sure, Mama,” Jorge said. “Tomorrow.”

  They all visited the grave that night and said silent prayers for Miguel. They held hands under the stars and embraced each other. They were sad, but they drew strength from each other and that night Carlos, Jorge, and Perla all heard their mother saying a rosary for their brother. They crossed themselves and went to bed, there to sleep and dream of what they had lost and wonder at the mystery of life itself.

  Chapter 12

  Tad Rankin, trail boss for the Rocking M on the drive to Salina, had a gut feeling that started soon after he got the herd moving off Miles Blaine’s ranch.

  Trouble, to Tad, was a Hydra-headed temptress just waiting to pounce on the unsuspected.

  He didn’t voice his concerns to Miles, since he knew they were premature, and they might show him to be weak. But from the outset, he knew he was dealing with green hands and a boss, Miles, who, in his estimation, was not capable of planning a drive of this size. Miles had taken cattle up to Colorado, he knew, but had no part in the generalship of that drive. As far as Tad was concerned, Miles was just another greenhorn cowhand.

  But he was going to treat his boss with respect and allow Miles to believe that he was in charge. That last feat would add to his worries, but Tad was accustomed to responsibility. That was why Doc had made him trail boss, he knew.

  “Do we have enough hands, Tad?” Miles asked once the herd was moving north. “I had to replace Earl Rawson with Rudy Manley. Rudy’s only eighteen, a year younger than Earl.”

  “As long as Rudy follows orders, he’ll be okay. Better’n that Rawson you left behind.”

  “Oh, you didn’t like Earl?”

  “That boy’s a slacker. His mind is on something else besides cattle. I seen that right off.”

  “I thought he was a pretty good hand,” Miles said. He and Rankin rode drag while Joadie Lee and Curly Bob were trying to sort out the confusion at the head of the herd, with cattle vying for the lead, fighting for top spot.

  “He sure didn’t have no yen for this drive,” Tad said.

  “He told you that?”

  “Not in so many words. I asked him a few questions yesterday afternoon and I just didn’t like his answers.”

  “You read men pretty good, do you?”

  “I
reckon so. That’s what Doc, your pa, tells me anyway. That’s why he made me foreman of the Slash B.”

  Some of the cattle began to stray from the middle of the herd. Tad saw that Rudy was having trouble.

  “You stay here while I ride up and get them cows back into the pack,” Tad said, racing off to help the new man, Rudy.

  Miles watched in fascination as Tad deftly guided his horse straight at the leader of the rebellion, turned him back into the herd, then whipped his horse in a tight circle to bluff the others back in line. He did it all in a few seconds while Rudy scratched his head in bewilderment.

  Tad spoke to Rudy, but Miles couldn’t hear what he said. Moments later, though, Rudy was yelling at the cattle and slapping his thigh as he rode alongside the left flank, as if to establish dominance over that part of the herd.

  “Nicely done,” Miles said when Tad returned to ride alongside him. “What did you tell Rudy?”

  “I told him he had to show the herd who was boss. The kid’ll be all right. Let’s check that right flank, just to be sure we don’t have no strays bolting for home.”

  The two men rode to the other side and watched as Pedro Coronado drove a lone deserter back into line, using his horse to block the cow every time it took a new track and, finally, driving it back into the herd until it was just one more animal among many, without a will of its own.

  “We’ve got to turn this herd into a single body,” Tad said. “We want all the cattle to play follow the leader. The trick is to keep them tight bunched, but give them room to walk without bumping into each other’s butts. Once they get into that routine, they’ll follow the leader over a cliff.”

  As if to illustrate his words, Tad rode up on the rear and yelled, “Hiya, hiya,” at the stragglers and nudged them closer to the pack. The other cattle in front of them closed ranks and bunched up until they found tracks for themselves.

  “You do that well, Tad. Like Pa. He knew how to keep a herd rolling along.”

  “Yep, your pa is plenty savvy about cattle.”

  They bedded down the herd that night, after making about fifteen miles. The chuck wagon caught up to them at sundown, with Carey Newgate, the cook. Tad had chosen him because he not only could cook, but was a good hand with cattle. Grumpy old Lonnie “Skeeter” Parsons, the regular cookie, had been left behind, much to his displeasure.

  “Skeeter,” Tad had told him, “you got the rheumatiz and a bad stomach from eatin’ your own grub. ’Sides, the onliest thing you know about cattle is how to butcher ’em.”

  “You’ll be sorry, Tad Rankin,” Skeeter had said. “Once you taste Newgate’s vittles, you’ll wish I was the cook.”

  “If I have to, Skeeter, I’ll send a man back to fetch you and save us all from starvation.”

  Skeeter fumed the whole time that he was helping Carey stock the chuck wagon, and was still moaning when they pulled out with the herd, leaving him behind.

  The wind howled during the night, but dropped off before morning. Tad had the herd rolling before dawn after an early breakfast of beef, biscuits, thick gravy, peaches from airtights, scalding strong coffee, and bear claws coated with glazed sugar.

  Miles found himself riding drag all by himself while Tad rode up and down both flanks and helped turn the herd toward Oklahoma. Miles kept the cattle in the lead close-packed and had no trouble. Still, he was relieved when Tad finally joined him in midafternoon. They had not stopped for lunch, but chewed on hardtack and beef jerky, washed down with water from their wooden canteens.

  “I been lookin’ at that sky,” Tad said when he rode up. “Up north and west.”

  “Yeah. Looks blue and peaceful to me.”

  “Way off yonder, I think I seen some black wisps. There could be a storm building.”

  Miles looked again and saw just the faintest dark cloud so far off he thought his eyes might be playing tricks on him.

  “See it?” Tad asked.

  “Looks like a far-off hill to me.”

  “It’s a cloud. Anyway, we got to get these cattle up to the Canadian for a drink, and I’ll be able to tell more when we get there.”

  “Like what, Tad?”

  “How fast the river’s runnin’, how much water’s in it, and where we can cross ’thout drownin’ half the herd.”

  “If you say so,” Miles said.

  They made twenty miles that day and the cattle were groaning from hunger and thirst, some of them bellowing and the others beginning to toss their horns and trying to break out.

  Tad turned the herd northward and they reached the Canadian before sunset. The cattle lined up along the bank and slaked their thirst. Tad rode up and down a stretch of riverbank and came back in a half hour. The hands were all riding back and forth, keeping eyes on the herd. Some of the cattle had finished drinking and were grazing on the grass, seemingly contented.

  “There’s a small bend about a half mile downriver,” Tad told Miles. “Water’s not to my liking. It’s pretty swift, but I think we can ford it okay. I’ll let Newgate run the chuck wagon across first and see how he does.”

  “If you think that’ll work,” Miles said.

  “If it don’t, we’re up shit crick ’thout a paddle,” Tad said.

  Tad rode over close to the drinking cattle. He cupped his hands together and yelled his orders to the cowhands.

  “Boys, we’ll cross this river and eat supper on the other side. You be ready to drive the herd downstream when I tell you to, in small bunches, a few at a time. Got that?”

  The men yelled and nodded.

  “Carey, follow me in that chuck wagon,” Tad said, and rode off toward the place he had picked as a ford.

  Carey clucked to the two horses pulling the wagon, and with a clanking and a rumbling of wheels, the wagon lurched into motion. Miles followed to see how well the wagon made the crossing.

  “You go straight across here,” Tad told Newgate. “Don’t stop. Don’t let the horses take the bits in their mouths. You got to keep ’em straight and steady. Can you do it?”

  “I sure hope so,” Newgate said. He snapped the reins across the horses’ backs, and despite their reluctance, they stepped off the bank into the swift-running waters of the river. The water came up to the hub nuts of the wagon, then rumbled across a thin sandbar and back into deeper water. The horses tried to turn away, but Carey kept them on a straight course, using the buggy whip whenever they tended to go right or left. Their eyes rolled in their sockets and they whinnied their displeasure. But they mounted the far bank and pulled the dripping wagon up on solid ground.

  “He did it,” Miles exclaimed.

  “If he did it, them cows can do it,” Tad said. Then he called across the river to Newgate.

  “Drive that wagon a good half mile away from the river. Find us a good spot to bed the herd down and where you can fix us some grub for supper. Hear?”

  “I hear ya,” Newgate replied, and started the wagon rolling again, away from the river.

  Miles and Tad rode back to where the men and cattle were waiting.

  “Miles,” Tad said, “you get behind where I mark the first bunch and ride drag once we get ’em started toward that bend. Then, when they’ve all crossed all right, you come back and do the same with the next bunch.”

  Miles nodded that he understood.

  Tad walked along and sliced his hand in the air to show where each bunch ended and the next started.

  “Pedro,” he said, “you get that first bunch I marked off started. I’ll help you.”

  There were about two hundred head in each bunch. Pedro got his bunch started downriver. Miles fell in behind, while Tad rode flank. At the ford, Tad and Pedro cut into the herd, forcing the leaders into the river, then pushed at the others with their horses. Once they started, the cattle made a beeline for the opposite shore, with only one or two drifting into deeper water where they had to swim. Still, they all made it.

  “Find a place to bed ’em down, Pedro,” Tad called. “There’s more a-comin’.�
��

  The next bunch was more difficult and Tad had to ride one flank while Curly Bob pushed the leaders to cross in a straight line.

  Tad did the same with each bunch, with men riding back across to help run the two hundred head in each bunch across the river. The last bunch followed fast on the heels of the preceding bunch and made the crossing without incident.

  Finally, Miles and Tad rode across. On the other side, Tad stopped and pointed to the river.

  “Look at it,” he said. “See anything different about it?”

  Miles looked upriver and at the opposite bank.

  “It seems to be rising slightly,” he said.

  “And look at what’s swirlin’ out there. Branches and leaves and clumps of stuff. Now that sky is plumb full of black clouds way off. That storm’s already hit upriver and it’s a-comin’ our way with a real gully washer afore mornin’.”

  Miles looked at the western sky. The sun was still shining and falling slowly toward the distant horizon, but huge black clouds were encroaching on the light, blotting out the blue in one corner of the sky. They seemed to drift from the northwest, growing larger and moving toward them ever so slowly.

  “What will we do?” Miles asked.

  “Well, we can’t run and we can’t hide, Miles,” Tad said. “All we can do is sing to that herd. If it starts thunderin’ and lightnin’, they might stampede and we got to do roundup all over again.”

  “Jesus,” Miles said.

  “Yeah, a little prayin’ might help,” Tad said as he turned his horse to follow the herd.

  A while later, they all felt the wind rise and blow cold across the prairie. The sky turned black along the eastern horizon, and the glow of the sun faded after it sank from sight. The men all put on their heavy jackets and broke out their slickers before they filled their plates with grub from the chuck wagon.

  The cattle moaned and lifted their noses to sniff the air.

  The air began to turn slightly moist with the hint of rain as the cattle fed on the tall grasses, their rumps turned westward into the building wind.

  Chapter 13

  Paco Villareal gave crisp, clear orders to his men. He knew they would grumble, but they would get the job done.