by Alan Lemay
A quarter mile off a bedded-down meadow lark sprang into the air, circled uncertainly, then drifted away. Henry became motionless, except for his eyes, which moved continually, casting the plain. Five hundred yards to the right of the spot where the meadow lark had jumped, a covey of quail went up.
Henry turned and ran for the house.
Chapter Two
Martin Pauley had found this day a strange one almost from the start. Twelve riders had gathered to trail some cow thieves who had bit into the Mathisons’; and the queer thing about it was that five out of the twelve soon disagreed with all the others as to what they were following.
Aaron Mathison, who owned the run-off cattle, was a bearded, calm-eyed man of Quaker extraction. He had not been able to hold onto the part of his father’s faith which forswore the bearing of arms, but he still prayed, and read the Bible every day. Everything about the Mathison place was either scrubbed, or raked, or whitewashed, but the house was cramped and sparely furnished compared to the Edwards’. All the money Aaron could scrape went into the quality of his livestock. Lately he had got his Lazy Lightning brand on ten head of blood bulls brought on from Kansas City. These had been held, by the chase-’em-back method, with a small herd on the Salt Crick Flats. This was the herd that was gone.
They picked up the churned trail of the stolen herd shortly after dawn, and followed it briskly, paced by the light-riding Mathison boys on their good horses. Martin Pauley lagged back, dogging it in the early hours. He had a special grouch of his own because he had looked forward to a visit with Laurie Mathison before they set out. Laurie was eighteen, like himself—straight and well boned, he thought, in terms he might have used to judge a filly. Lately he had caught her unwary gray eyes following him, now and then, when he was around the Mathisons’. But not this morning.
Laurie had been flying around, passing out coffee and quick-grab breakfast, with two of the Harper boys and Charlie MacCorry helping her on three sides—all of them clowning, and cutting up, and showing off, till there was no way to get near. Martin Pauley was a quiet boy, dark as an Indian except for his light eyes; he never did feel he cut much of a figure among the blond and easy-laughing people with whom he was raised. So he had hung back, arid never did get to talk to Laurie. She ran out to his stirrup, and said, “Hi,” hardly looking at him as she handed him a hunk of hot meat wrapped in bread— no coffee—and was gone again. And that was the size of it.
For a while Martin kept trying to think of something cute he might have said. Didn’t think of a thing. So he got bored with himself, and took a wide unneedful swing out on the flank. He was casting the prairie restlessly, looking for nothing in particular, when presently he found something that puzzled him and made him uneasy.
Mystified, he crossed the trail and swung wide on the other flank to take a look at the ground over there; and here he found Amos, doing the same thing. Amos Edwards was forty, two years older than his brother Henry, a big burly figure on a strong but speedless horse. He was some different from the rest of the Edwards family. His heavy head of hair was darker, and probably would have been red-brown, except that it was unbrushed, without any shine to it. And he was liable to be pulled back into his shell between rare bursts of temper. Just now he was riding lumpily, hands in his pockets, reins swinging free from the horn, while he guided his horse by unnoticeable flankings with the calves of his legs and two-ounce shifts of weight. Martin cleared his throat a few times, hoping Amos would speak, but he did not.
“Uncle Amos,” Martin said, “you notice something almighty fishy about this trail?”
“Like what?”
“Well, at the jump-off I counted tracks of twelve, fifteen ponies working this herd. Now I can’t find no more than four, five. First I supposed the rest had pushed on ahead, and their trails got tromp out by cows—”
“That’s shrewd,” Amos snubbed him. “I never would have thunk of it.”
“—only, just now I find me a fit-up where two more ponies forked off—and they sure didn’t push on ahead. They turned back.”
“Why?”
“Why? Gosh, Uncle Amos—how the hell should I know? That’s what itches me.”
“Do me one thing,” Amos said. “Drop this ‘Uncle’ foolishness.”
“Sir?”
“You don’t have to call me ‘Sir,’ neither. Nor ‘Grampaw,’ neither. Nor ‘Methuselah,’ neither. I can whup you to a frazzle.”
Martin was blanked. “What should I call you?”
“Name’s Amos.”
“All right. Amos. You want I should mosey round and see what the rest of ’em think?”
“They’ll tell you the same.” He was pulled back in his shell, fixing to bide his time.
It was straight-up noon, and they had paused to water at a puddle in a coulee, before Amos made his opinion known. “Aaron,” he said in tones most could hear, “I’d be relieved to know if all these boys realize what we’re following here. Because it ain’t cow thieves. Not the species we had in mind.”
“How’s this, now?”
“What we got here is a split-off from an Indian war party, running wild loose on a raid.” He paused a moment, then finished quietly. “Maybe you knowed that already. In case you didn’t, you know it now. Because I just told you,”
Aaron Mathison rubbed his fingers through his beard and appeared to consider; and some of the others put in while he did that. Old Mose Harper pointed out that none of the thieves had ridden side by side, not once on the trail, as the tracks showed plain. Indians and dudes rode single file—Indians to hide their numbers, and dudes because the horses felt like it—but white men rode abreast in order to gab all the time. So the thieves were either Indians or else not speaking. One t’other. This contribution drew partly hidden smiles from Mose Harper’s sons.
Young Charlie MacCorry, a good rough-stock rider whom Martin resented because of his lively attentions to Laurie Mathison, spoke of noticing that the thieves all rode small unshod horses, a whole lot like buffalo ponies. And Lije Powers got in his two cents. Lije was an old-time buffalo hunter, who now lived by wandering from ranch to ranch, “stopping by.” He said now that he had “knowed it from the fust,” and allowed that what they were up against was a “passel of Caddoes.”
Those were all who took any stock in the theory.
Aaron Mathison reasoned in even tones that they had no real reason to think any different than when they had started. The northeasterly trend of the trail said plainly that the thieves were delivering the herd to some beef contractor for one of the Indian Agencies—maybe old Fort Towson. Nothing else made any sense. The thieves had very little start; steady riding should force a stand before sundown tomorrow. They had only to push on, and all questions would soon be answered.
“I hollered for a back track at the start,” Amos argued. “Where’s the main war party these here forked off from? If they’re up ahead, that’s one thing. But if they’re back where our families be—”
Aaron bowed his head for several moments, as if in prayer; but when his head came up he was looking at Amos Edwards with narrowed eyes. He spoke gently, slipping into Quakerish phrasings; and Martin Pauley, who had heard those same soft tones before, knew the argument was done. “Thee can turn back,” Aaron said. “If thee fears what lies ahead or what lies behind, I need thee no more.”
He turned his horse and rode on. Two or three hesitated, but ended by following him.
Amos was riding with his hands in his pockets again, letting his animal keep up as it chose; and Martin saw that Amos had fallen into one of his deadlocks. This was a thing that happened to Amos repeatedly, and it seemed to have a close relationship with the shape of his life. He had served two years with the Rangers, and four under Hood, and had twice been up the Chisholm Trail. Earlier he had done other things—bossed a bull train, packed the mail, captained a stage station—and he had done all of them well. Nobody exactly understood why he always drifted back, sooner or later, to work for his younger br
other, with never any understanding as to pay.
What he wanted now was to pull out of the pursuit and go back. If he did turn, it could hardly be set down to cowardice. But it would mark him as unreliable and self-interested to an unforgivable degree in the eyes of the other cowmen. A thing like that could reflect on his whole family, and tend to turn the range against them. So Amos sat like a sack of wheat, in motion only because he happened to be sitting on a horse, and the horse was following the others.
His dilemma ended unexpectedly.
Brad Mathison, oldest of Aaron’s boys, was ranging far ahead. They saw him disappear over the saddle of a ridge at more than two miles. Immediately, he reappeared, stopped against the sky, and held his rifle over his head with both hands. It was the signal for “found.” Then he dropped from sight beyond the ridge again.
Far behind him, the others put the squeeze to their horses, and lifted into a hard run. They stormed over the saddle of the ridge, and were looking down into a broad basin. Some scattered bunches of red specks down there were cattle grazing loose on their own. Aaron Mathison, with his cowman’s eyes, recognized each speck that could be seen at all as an individual animal of his own. Here was the stolen herd, unaccountably dropped and left.
Brad was only about a mile out on the flats, but running his horse full stretch now toward the hills beyond the plain.
“Call in that damn fool,” Amos said. He fired his pistol into the air, so that Brad looked back.
Aaron spun his horse in close circles to call in his son. Brad turned reluctantly, as if disposed to argue with his father, but came trotting back. Now Aaron spotted something fifty yards to one side, and rode to it for a closer look. He stepped down, and the others closed in around him. One of the young blood bulls lay there, spine severed by the whack of an axe. The liver had been ripped out, but no other meat taken. When they had seen this much, most of the riders sat and looked at each other. They barely glanced at the moccasin prints, faint in the dustfilm upon the baked ground. Amos, though, not only dismounted, but went to his knees; and Martin Pauley stooped beside him, not to look wise, but trying to find out what Amos was looking for. Amos jabbed the carcass with his thumb. “Only nine, ten hours old,” he said. Then, to Lije Powers, “Can you tell what moccasins them be?”
Lije scratched his thin beard. “Injuns,” he said owlishly. He meant it for a joke, but nobody ‘laughed. They followed Mathison as he loped out to meet his son.
“I rode past five more beef kills,” Brad said when they came together. He spoke soberly, his eyes alert upon his father’s face. “All these down here are heifers. And all killed with the lance. Appears like the lance wounds drive deep forward from just under the short ribs, clean through to the heart. I never saw that before.”
“I have,” Lije Powers said. He wanted to square himself for his misfire joke. “Them’s Comanche buffler hunters done that. Ain’t no others left can handle a lance no more.”
Some of the others, particularly the older men, were looking gray and bleak. The last five minutes had taken them ten years back into the past, when every night of the world was an uncertain thing. The years of watchfulness and struggle had brought them some sense of confidence and security toward the last; but now all that was struck, away as if they had their whole lives to do over again. But instead of taking ten years off their ages it put ten years on.
“This here’s a murder raid,” Amos said, sending his words at Aaron like rocks. “It shapes up to scald out either your place or Henry’s. Do you know that now?”
Aaron’s beard was sunk on his chest. He said slowly, “I see no other likelihood.”
“They drove your cattle to pull us out,” Amos hammered it home. “We’ve give ’em free run for the last sixteen hours!”
“I question if they’ll hit before moonrise. Not them Comanch.” Lije spoke with the strange detachment of one who has seen too much for too long.
“Moonrise! Ain’t a horse here can make it by midnight!”
Brad Mathison said through his teeth, “I’ll come almighty close!” He wheeled his pony and put it into a lope.
Aaron bellowed, “Hold in that horse!” and Brad pulled down to a slamming trot.
Most of the others were turning to follow Brad, talking blasphemies to their horses and themselves. Charlie MacCorry had the presence of mind to yell, “Which place first? We’ll be strung out twenty mile!”
“Mathison’s is this side!” Mose Harper shouted. Then to Amos over his shoulder, “If we don’t fight there, we’ll come straight on!”
Martin Pauley was scared sick over what they might find back home, and Laurie was in his mind too, so that the people he cared about were in two places. He was crazy to get started, as if haste could get him to both places at once. But he made himself imitate Amos, who unhurriedly pulled off saddle and bridle. They fed grain again, judging carefully how much their animals would do best on, and throwing the rest away. The time taken to rest and feed would get them home quicker in the end.
By the time they crossed the saddleback the rest of the riders were far spaced, according to the judgment of each as to how his horse might best be spent. Amos branched off from the way the others took. Miles were important, now, and they could save a few by passing well west of Mathison’s. Amos had already made up his mind that he must kill his horse in this ride; for they had more than eighty miles to go before they would know what had happened—perhaps was happening now—to the people they had left at home.
Chapter Three
Henry Edwards stood watching the black prairie through a loophole in a batten shutter. The quartering moon would rise late; he wanted to see it coming, for he believed now that all the trouble they could handle would be on them with the moon’s first light. The dark kitchen in which the family waited was closed tight except for the loopholes. The powder smoke was going to get pretty thick in here if they had to fight. Yet the house was becoming cold. Any gleam of light would so hurt their chances that they had even drawn the coals from the firebox of the stove and drowned them in a tub.
The house itself was about as secure as a house could be made. The loopholed shutters, strap-hinged on the inside, were heavy enough to stop a 30-30, if not a buffalo slug, and the doors were even better. Nine or ten rifles could hold the place forever against anything but artillery. As few as seven would have their hands full against a strong war party, but should hold.
There lay the trouble and the fear. Henry did not have seven. He had himself, and his two sons, and Martha. Hunter was a deadly shot, and Ben, though only fourteen, would put in a pretty fair job. But Martha couldn’t shoot any too well. Most likely she would hold fire until the last scratch, in hopes the enemy would go away. And Lucy …Lucy might do for a lookout someplace, but her dread of guns was so great she would be useless even to load. Henry had made her strap on a pistol, but he doubted if she could ever fire it, even to take her own life in event of capture.
And then there was Deborah. The boys had been good shots at eight; but Debbie, though pushing ten, seemed so little to Henry that he hadn’t let her touch a weapon yet. You don’t see your own children grow unless there’s a new one to remind you how tiny they come. In Henry’s eyes, Debbie hadn’t changed in size since she was brand new, with feet no bigger than a fingertip with toes.
Four rifles, then, or call it three and a half, to hold two doors and eight shuttered windows, all of which could be busted in.
Out in the work-team corral a brood mare gave a long whinny, then another after a moment’s pause. Everyone in the kitchen held his breath, waiting for the mare’s call to be answered. No answer came, and after a while, when she whinnied again, Henry drew a slow breath. The mare had told him a whole basket of things he didn’t want to know. Strange ponies were out there, probably with stud horses among them; the mare’s nose had told her, and the insistence of her reaction left no room for doubt. They were Indian ridden, because loose ponies would have answered, and horses ridden by friends would ha
ve been let to answer. The Indians were Comanches, for the Comanches were skillful at keeping their ponies quiet. They wove egg-size knots into their rawhide hackamores, so placed that the pony’s nostrils could be pinched if he so much as pricked an ear. This was best done from the ground, so Henry judged that the Comanches had dismounted, leaving their ponies with horse holders. They were fixing to close on foot—the most dangerous way there was.
One thing more. They were coming from more than one side, because none would have approached downwind, where the mare could catch their scent, unless they were all around. A big party, then, or it would not have split up. No more hope, either, that the Comanches meant only to break fence on the far side of the corrals to run the stock off. This was a full-scale thing, with all the chips down, tonight.
Lucy’s voice came softly out of the dark. “Debbie?” Then more loudly, with a note of panic, “Debbie! Where are you?” Everyone’s voice sounded eery coming out of the unseen.
“Here I am.” They heard the cover put back on the cookie crock at the far end of the room.
“You get back on your pallet, here! And stay put now, will you?”
Long ago, hide-hunting at the age of eighteen, Henry and two others had fought off more than twenty Kiowas from the shelter of nothing more than a buffalo wallow. They had fought with desperation enough, believing they were done for; but he couldn’t remember any such sinking of the heart as he felt now behind these fort-strong walls. Little girls in the house—that’s what cut a man’s strings, and made a coward of him, every bit as bad as if the Comanches held them hostage already. His words were steady, though, even casual, as he made his irrevocable decision.
