The Amarillo Trail

by Ralph Compton

  He walked past the hay barn and the smaller milking barn to the well with its trough, set between the house and outbuildings. He worked the pump handle up and down. Water spewed from the spout. He took off his hat and drenched his head, then scrubbed his face and hands. He dried off with a towel hanging on a used hay hook. When he put his hat back on and turned toward the house, he saw Floybel standing on the porch, her apron floating over her plain gray dress with the little white collar that hid the wattles in her neck.

  “You be a mite late, Clarence, but the food’s still warm and the table’s set.”

  “Are you bein’ my clock today, Floybel?” Clarence said.

  “You got your old head bent over that plow all mornin’, you probably didn’t see it,” she said. “I been seein’ it all mornin’ through my kitchen winder.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  She pointed off to the south.

  “That dust cloud yonder,” she said. “It keeps getting bigger’n bigger.”

  He looked at the sky. Way off in the distance, he saw a haze, a thin scrim of reddish dust that hung in the air like rosy smoke.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Cursin’ ain’t goin’ to help none,” she said. “I’m thinkin’ one of us ought to take the buggy over to the Bickhams’ and see if they can’t ride over with some long guns.”

  He climbed the steps and stood next to her. He put an arm around her waist, but she pulled away.

  “We ain’t got time for that nonsense, Clarence. You keep your fool hands to yourself.”

  “Maybe it’s just the wind,” he said. “I saw some dark clouds to the southeast when I was walkin’ back to the barn. Looks like we might get us a storm.”

  “I seen ’em too,” she said. “They ain’t no wind here yet and that cloud of red dust is still a far piece. But I’m thinkin’ it looks like more of them Texans is comin’ and headin’ straight for our farm.”

  “Too far off to tell.”

  “Well, I think one of us ought to go tell the Bickhams and they can tell the Cramers and the Cramers can get word to the Longleys. We might need a heap of help if more of them Texans is a-comin’.”

  “You can ride over and tell Jerry Bickham, once we know for sure.”

  “Might be too late.”

  Her face was creased with worry lines, her mouth wrinkled like a dried prune, her small green-blue eyes cloudy with worry.

  He looked again to the south and saw wisps of dust rise above the tiny reddish cloud. The tendrils did not waft away with wind, but just hung there like strands of rosy cobwebs. He saw the dark clouds to the southwest, just above the distant horizon. There could be a storm coming, he thought, and that sure as hell might be a cattle drive heading their way.

  “I got to finish that field before nightfall,” he said. “Ground won’t wait another day.”

  “Oh, you and your ground. It waited a year. I think they’s trouble comin’ up the pike and if you don’t turn them Texans away, we’re gonna lose what crops we got started.”

  “Maybe they’ll read my signs and turn off,” he said.

  “Oh, you think Texans can read, huh, Clarence?”

  “Now, now, Floybel, don’t get yourself into a hissy over a little bit of dust in the sky. If it’s a herd of cows, they’re more than a day away by my figgerin’. Can’t get here much before mornin’, I’m thinkin’.”

  “Well, that may be, but we ought to be ready for them when they gets here, sure enough.”

  “You take the buggy and ride over to the Bickhams’ after dinner,” he said. “You should be back long before suppertime.”

  “I’ll do that, Clarence. If you’ll hitch up Lady Kay for me.”

  “The mare? You ought to take the gelding.”

  “Foxy’s too ornery. Lady Kay will carry me where I want to go.”

  “Suit yourself, Floybel.”

  They walked into the house together. They left the door open. Clarence could smell the food warming on the stove. The kitchen table was set and she poured him a glass of spring water before she brought the chicken and dumplings she had prepared. There were preserved peaches from their orchards, kept in Mason jars in the storm cellar, and spinach from her garden out back.

  “You want milk?” she asked.

  “Nope. It sours in my stomach when I’m plowin’,” he said.

  “Clarence, you work too hard. You got to get a hired man or two to help out.”

  “Unreliable,” he said.

  She laughed and sat down, began to dish up the food with a large ladle. Clarence tied his napkin around his neck like a bib and rolled up his sleeves. His bony wrists were tanned and speckled with brown spots.

  They bowed their heads when the food was steaming on their plates.

  “Lord, we give thanks for this food,” Clarence intoned. “And we’re grateful for all your blessings. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Floybel said. She raised her head and glanced out the window. She frowned and the worry lines on her forehead deepened as her seagreen eyes danced with a vagrant light that only served to deepen the shadows under them.

  The house creaked in the silence as they ate, ticking like some old attic clock covered with dust but refusing to die.

  Chapter 19

  Miles studied the map his father had given him. It was crude, so he had been careful to have one of his hands scout ahead as the herd moved northward. He had also made changes to the map, adding landmark notations and observations of the terrain.

  “For future use,” he told Roy.

  “What you ought to do, Miles,” Roy said, “is draw up a new map. Just get a blank piece of paper and draw a line on it. When we’re all through with the drive, you can add them notes.”

  “Just a line?”

  “No, you can add cross lines for good or bad places, put dots in for towns or landmarks.”

  “I ain’t no mapmaker,” Miles said.

  “Neither am I. But if I was makin’ a new map, that’s how I’d do it.”

  “I got a map. I’m just adding to it.”

  “You write so small nobody can read it.”

  “I can read it,” Miles said, and the subject dropped out of their conversation.

  They had begun to see distant farmhouses and roads that were not on Doc’s map. Miles noted these in his tiny scrawls. So far, they had avoided any encounters with Kansas farmers, but there had been ominous indications that Texas cattlemen were not welcome.

  At one place, a crossroads, there was a sign that said NO TEXANS ALLOWED. The cattle had run over it, knocking it to the ground. Randy laughed.

  “Did you do that a-purpose?” Dale called out when he saw the sign go down.

  “No, Dale,” Randy said. “That sign just jumped out in front of the cows on my flank and they tromped it down.”

  The herd followed a path that paralleled the Arkansas River, plainly marked on the map Miles carried with him, but the drovers had to thin the herd to avoid some of the farmland crops.

  “This don’t look good, Roy,” Miles said. “We’re seein’ more and more farms and I think the herd just messed up an irrigation canal.”

  “They run through it,” Roy said, “but it was just like crossin’ a creek. Water from the river’s still runnin’.”

  “Still, we have to be careful. I don’t want to get chased by a lot of farmers with pitchforks and scythes.”

  “Or get blasted with both barrels of a shotgun,” Roy said.

  Later that day, Jules and Dale turned the herd to the river. As the cattle lined up to drink, Jules rode to the rear of the column, where he met up with Roy and Miles.

  “Miles,” Jules said, “you got your glass?”

  “In my saddlebag. Why?”

  “I see some specks up ahead that might be farm buildings. Can’t make ’em out real clear. You want to take a look?”

  Miles fished in his saddlebag and brought out an old telescope, studded with brass bindings. He pulled it to its full length and brought it up
to his right eye.

  “Don’t see no smoke,” he said.

  “Hell, they ain’t gonna burn wood in this heat,” Jules said.

  “I see what looks like maybe a roof. Hold on.” He adjusted the eyepiece and swept the lens across a distant point on the horizon. “Might be two roofs. I can make ’em out just barely.”

  “That’s where we got to go,” Jules said. “Right straight to them buildings.”

  Roy reached for the telescope. Miles relinquished it and watched as Roy viewed the objects in the distance.

  “Probably a big old farm,” Roy said. “We’d better scout it. We won’t get there till morning, probably, but we may have to go around it.”

  “I agree,” Miles said.

  “I’ll send Dale on up ahead to look things over,” Jules said.

  “Have him report back to me,” Miles said.

  “Sure thing, boss,” Jules said, and rode back to the head of the column.

  “You want us to get the herd moving, Miles?” Roy said.

  “No, let them drink. They’ll move slower and that will give us time to see if that’s a farm out yonder. Maybe Dale can find a way around it that won’t waste much of our time.”

  “Good idea,” Roy said, and they both watched the cattle as they gulped water from the river.

  There was a commotion at the riverbank. Cows bawled and reared up. Some kicked out their hind legs, then ran, bumping into other cattle. A few cows bellowed.

  Miles looked over at the site where cattle were rearing up and kicking, and saw several bolt away from the river. Then he heard some splashes and became alarmed.

  “Something’s got into those cows,” Roy declared, and put the spurs to his horse’s flanks. Miles wheeled his horse and followed. Randy yelled and galloped over to the river, flailing his hat in an attempt to drive some of the cattle away from the center of the disturbance.

  “You hear that?” Roy said.

  Miles listened to a sound that emanated from the bunch of wildly milling cattle.

  “Sounds like rain,” Miles said. “Rain on leaves.”

  Randy yelled out as his horse reared up and pawed the air, then hit the ground and went into a tailspin. Randy held on as if he were at a rodeo atop the deck of a bucking bronco.

  “Rattlers,” Randy shouted. “A whole nest of’em.”

  Miles rode up and pushed through the panicked clutch of cows trying to escape the danger. He saw a number of small snakes wriggling toward him, their tails straight up and gyrating in circles. Rattles clattered and snakes struck at the legs and hooves of cattle. The uproar from the bellowing cows nearly drowned out the insistent buzz of the rattles. The snakes were so small, their rattling did sound like rain pelting down on trees, striking the leaves and bark with a steady and monotonous tattoo.

  Randy regained control of his horse, and reached for his coiled lariat. The bank had given way under the weight of so many stomping cattle and four had fallen into the river. They were struggling to swim, their front hooves smashing the water like so many millwheels. The cattle were swept along with the current.

  Men yelled back and forth as the cattle flailed the water, trying to buck the current and swim back to shore.

  Roy grabbed his lariat as Randy whirled his loop into a wider circle above his head. Randy threw the rope and it landed around a cow’s neck. His horse backed up and the rope grew taut.

  Baby rattlesnakes streamed over the ground like giant diamond-backed worms, their rattles a blur at the end of their tails. The racket increased as Miles unlimbered his own lariat and rode to the bank several yards from where Randy was pulling a heavy whiteface up to the bank, his horse straining with the ponderous weight of the waterlogged cow.

  Ralph Beasley roped another cow, a large steer, and his horse turned and pulled the rope taut. Ralph rode along the bank and gradually pulled away from it. The steer’s hooves struck bottom a foot from shore and it struggled to pull itself up onto dry land. Ralph spurred his horse and the steer gained the bank and clambered up. It dripped water and shook itself. Randy turned and rode up to it, loosened the loop, and freed his rope.

  Miles threw down on the last head of a cow that he saw swimming frantically toward the opposite bank. He built his loop and hurled it with all his might. He watched as the lariat sailed past the struggling cow and then dropped over its horns. He jerked on the rope and the cow’s head twisted as the lariat tautened, enclosing both horns in its closed loop.

  “Come on, Abe,” he yelled to his horse. “Dig in, boy, dig in.”

  The horse strained against the heavy pull of the rope, and the cow’s head turned. It began to swim with all four legs churning underwater, following the rope that was pulling at its horns.

  Carey set the brake on the chuck wagon and jumped down to help control the cattle that were trying to put distance between them and the infant rattlers. He waved his hat and turned several back into the herd. Other hands rode up and began to cut cattle out of one bunch and drive them into another.

  Roy and Ralph chased down six head and turned them back, pushed them farther up the line away from the place where some of the cattle had disturbed the nest of snakes.

  Miles got his cow out of the water and slipped the rope over its boss. The cow shook like a wet dog and splashed water on Abe and Miles, then lumbered off toward the other cattle drifting along the bank.

  “Let’s get these cattle separated from the snakes,” Miles called out as a pair of rattlers slithered past him, streaking through the grass like wriggling darning needles, their rattles setting up a burr of unnerving sound that rippled like electricity up his spine.

  Roy and Jules herded the last of the frightened cattle away from the riverbank and drove them into the lumbering herd. Randy’s horse reared up and stomped a coiled snake, smashing it to pieces with iron hooves. The horse snorted and sidled away, its eyes fixed on the writhing snake with its bloody innards showing, its head smashed flat.

  “Good boy,” Randy said, and sat, holding his horse in check as he panted for a decent breath.

  Jules rode up to Miles. “You want me to hold the herd a while longer, until Dale gets back?”

  “No, Jules. Dale won’t be back until sundown. That farm, if that’s what it is, is a good ten or twelve miles off. We’ll move slow until we get Dale’s report.”

  “I got you, boss,” Jules said, and rode off, back to the head of the herd.

  Randy rode over, his shirt soaked with sweat, his face clogged with dust.

  “Well, we didn’t lose any, Miles,” he said.

  “You did a good job, Randy. All of the hands did.”

  “You throw a pretty fair loop yourself, Miles.”

  “Lucky.”

  “Lucky is where practice gets you,” Randy said. “I seen you many a time at roundup hitting your mark with the loop.”

  “Pa taught me all I know,” Miles said. “God bless him.”

  He wished that Doc was with them that day. His nerves, he decided, were plumb shot. His veins sizzled with energy brought on by the excitement. He felt a warmth in his neck and on his face. His blood must have been racing all through his body. He was tired, but exhilarated. He felt alive and it was as if he could feel every muscle and bone in his body tingling with excitement.

  It was then that he turned to look at the sky beyond the river. To the southwest, far off, he saw the darkening sky.

  Roy rode up and halted his horse. “You see it too, eh, Miles?”

  “That’s a gulf storm buildin’,” Miles said.

  “That’s where the big ones come from, sure as fire burns.”

  “We may be in for it tonight, or maybe tomorrow.”

  “Them clouds ain’t movin’ fast from what I’ve seen. Tomorrow, maybe.”

  “Early.”

  “Early maybe. Hard to tell.”

  “I don’t like it none,” Miles said. “We got no shelter, nothing to stop the wind or the rain.”

  “Or a twister,” Roy said.

>   “Don’t say that word,” Miles said. “Especially not in flat Kansas.”

  Roy suppressed a laugh. Miles was serious. A tornado could raise hell with a herd. If one ever hit them, they would all be chasing cows until June.

  He rode away and started hooing at the cattle, waving his hat.

  The herd was moving again, peeling away from the river like ranks of marching beasts, returning to the trail, their curly white faces lit by sunlight, their amber hides glistening with a rippling radiance of reds and oranges, their horns bristling like curved lances, a veritable army of cattle marching off to another engagement, perhaps another battle.

  The cattle waded through dancing mirages, pools of water that evaporated into thin air only to reappear again off to the east or, like ghostly mirrors, in the uncharted north.

  Chapter 20

  Pete stood hipshot at the watering trough, neck bent, floppy ears laid back, twitching at the flies gorging on the tender lining. Clarence slipped a feed bag over his mouth and the mule munched on dried oats grown in one of his master’s fields.

  Clarence looked to the south and saw that the small cloud of dust had disappeared. But, to the southwest, the sky was still ominous, dark with clouds so far away they appeared to be black smudges on the otherwise blue sky with its clumps of cottony clouds suspended in the breezeless atmosphere.

  He hooked up the plow after Pete was finished with the oats, hung the canvas bag on the post. He plowed row after row, unearthing a few rocks that had strayed there from a year of rains, and churning up old dead cornstalks that had rotted to desiccated shreds.

  When the sun stood at what Clarence estimated to be around four o’clock in the afternoon, Clarence saw Floybel returning in the sulky. Dust spooled out from the two wheels and hung in the still air like dirt flung against damp glass. There was just no air stirring that warm afternoon. He had two more rows to plow. He waved to Floybel and she waved back. He saw no more of her until he drove the plow along the edge of the road, floating the blade above the plowed furrows. Pete walked at a good brisk pace all the way to the barn. Floybel was waiting and he could see that she was anxious to talk.