The 7th Western Novel

by Francis W. Hilton

  After that, fortified, he turned and said, “Good morning.”

  They were seated at Owl-Head Jackson’s round worktable, their plates of breakfast beans and salt pork on the scrubbed bare boards. Clay’s back was toward him. He caught a short lift of the blond head and knew that Clay’s eyes had met those of the unfamiliar man.

  Arnold said, “Morning, Lew. Guess you don’t know Ed Splann. This is Burnet, Splann, the fellow we were talking about who’s going to trail-boss for me.”

  “Howdy,” Splann grunted, looked up, and dropped his head again.

  Their talk did not go on. Clay Manning hadn’t spoken. Drinking his second cup of coffee, Lew felt a surliness in the silence here. Then something in the way the new Cross T hand stared up at him once in a direct, measuring appraisal and after that kept busy with his food made him take a more careful look. He was a powerfully built man, huge in every proportion, with arms as thick as a steer’s foreleg, rough features that were full and bold, unshaved and covered with a red-brown stubble. He looked like a cinnamon bear hunched over his plate; but watching him, Lew could place him in no familiar pattern.

  At the stove he filled his own breakfast plate with beans and pork, adding a corn-meal cake from a stack in the warming oven. He poured blackstrap molasses over the cake, and by the time he sat down to the table Clay and Ed Splann had finished eating. They stood up at once, dropped their dishes into Owl-Head’s wooden washtub and went out together.

  “What’s holding Clay’s tongue? Got a grouch on this morning?”

  Tom Arnold could be mild at strange times. He said gently, “Go easy with Clay, Lew. He didn’t take much to the idea of your being here to trail-boss for me. You can’t blame him. He’s been north twice himself.”

  “But not for two years, Tom, and trail conditions change overnight. Clay knows that.”

  “He’ll smooth out,” Arnold said, “when we get started.”

  “When will that be? What’s left to be done?” He felt a sudden blocked irritation. There was something here that he wanted to slash through. “Hell’s little fishes, Tom, there’s been time enough!”

  “You’d know better than that if you had been here,” Arnold said. “We’ve been hounded on every side. Clay says we’ll leave day after tomorrow. I’d hoped today. Road-branding is all that’s left to do. I bought some mixed herds the past two years. We’ve got to get those all under the Cross T.”

  “How many, Tom?”

  “A thousand head about.”

  Briefly Lew figured. A thousand head—ten hours. There was a trick he knew. But Clay Manning was still the foreman here; and then Tom Arnold’s look hardened and he was saying, “I’ll be eternally damned if a man can be everywhere! Moonlight Bailey’s still my horse wrangler and a good one, but he’s let the remuda drift, I guess. He told me last night we’re thirty head short. We’ll hunt them today.”

  “Try Crazy Woman,” Lew offered. “I saw tracks.” He explained no more. In a moment, with his breakfast finished, he said, “Since I’m not signed on the payroll yet I’ll take a little cruise this morning alone.”

  He saw Arnold’s glance lift sharply and drop. It was not his way to question a man.

  * * * *

  He rode west, threading the bottom of a twisted, broken canyon that rose toward the high rimrock above the valley. Presently he passed through the lower growth of desert willow into the juniper belt and then climbed on up a steep slant wooded with pine.

  There was a spring up here, trickling into a crystal pool on an open ledge of rock. And from this shelf a man could watch the whole length of the Little Comanche’s pale green floor or out over the flat plain to the east as far as his eyes would carry. It had been used for that back in the Apache days.

  But there was no sign now of a recent camp, and he drew in with a sharp disappointment. Then, his arms crossed on the saddle horn, he leaned forward to study the scene that stretched its endless miles below.

  This was the heart of west Texas, still a wild and unfenced prairie, at the peak of the longhorn years. Time was to come, very shortly, when barbed wire would make its little pastures across these miles and the cattle penned there would be fat, white-faced Herefords, hand-fed with a pitchfork, and cowboys would wear their high-heeled boots mostly in town on Saturday night. So soon that trail to the north, packed hard by millions of hoofs, was to be plowed under, and that a man would ride step by step twelve hundred miles to market a herd of beef would become an unbelievable and legendary thing.

  But it was all there beneath the flawless blue sky that May morning, the longhorns’ doom foretold only vaguely by Lew Burnet’s knowledge that too many herds were going north this year. Even as he watched eastward he could see dust clouds layered above the advancing columns, some of them forty miles away. Closer, where Ox Bow town made a handful of gray adobe cubes scattered beside the new railroad, a dark swarm moved out slowly, taking the arrowhead trail formation.

  He straightened in a moment, squinting to sharpen the focus of what his roving gaze had caught.

  A lone rider was coming out from that herd near town, the hoofs of his running horse shooting up puffs of dust like exploded bombs. He came on incredibly fast. Still out on the plain, he veered toward the low hills that rimmed the eastern side of the valley and was lost in there for perhaps ten minutes. When he came out his pace had slowed to a walk. Like that, unhurried, he moved into the Cross T roundup camp at the valley’s mouth.

  “Now then,” Lew asked, “what kind of coyote business was that?”

  With his gaze led to the roundup camp by that lone rider he watched the work going on below him. It brought a sudden scowl to the steady set of his hazel eyes. Half a dozen branding fires sent their smoke into the still air. He could see the small darting figures of mounted men cut into the pool of cattle and come out, each with his single animal at a rope’s end. There were a thousand steers to be road-branded, so Tom Arnold had said. They’d never get that job done by tomorrow night.

  Thought of so much lost time put its irritation in him. He knew a better way.

  He sat up and gathered his reins to go and turned for a last look at the spring where he had hoped a man would be camping. Old Willy Nickle was crouched there beside the water, smoking his black clay pipe.

  Lew grinned and wheeled his horse toward the motionless figure.

  “Lord, Willy,” he said, “you do make my scalp itch! Did you happen to be an Apache I’d have an arrow in my hump ribs by now!”

  “So you would.” Willy nodded.

  “How long have you been here? Saw no sign of your camp.”

  The old man stood up and stuffed his pipe into the deep pocket of his deer-hide coat.

  “Last night,” he said. “You don’t never leave your camp sign, boy,” he advised gravely. “Bury your fire and sleep away somewheres from the water. Well, that’s just talk though!” He leaned on the slender barrel of his needle gun and stared down into the valley. “Seems like the Cross T’s been slowed up some. That herd there past town is the Indian Supply outfit, so I think, hitting the trail ahead of Tom Arnold. That’s been their caper.”

  “They’ve thrown trouble aplenty into the Cross T’s start,” Lew agreed, “so I’m told.” He looked down into the old fellow’s dark, gentle face and brought out the thing he wanted to know.

  He gave his details clearly. “If a man leading the Cross T was to swing west and keep off the trail he’d save time and even pass the Indian Supply outfit maybe. There’s a shorter route. They tell me that Colonel McKitrick led a scouting army up the Staked Plain once and marked the way with rock piles. There’s buffalo grass enough this year. But it’s a question of water. No man hereabouts could say, I guess.”

  “Well, he could!” old Willy stated. “It’d be a dry drive first day to a tank, with nothing to go by. Then there’ll be those rock piles plain as a man’s nose. He could make it
a hundred miles north to the White Salt Fork. A double butte is his landmark there. He goes east from that.”

  “There’ll be water on the Staked Plain then, sure?”

  “If a man knows how the Apaches got it in them dry cienagas.”

  Lew grinned. “He does.” This was satisfying information, and he made a vital decision in that moment. “It’ll be the rock-pile route for the Cross T when I take it over. Without things happening we’ll start in another day.”

  Willy nodded and crouched again beside the water; and so, having planted that knowledge in his brain, Lew left him like a brown old eagle perched high on the ledge of rock.

  He rode down toward the branding fires in the valley’s mouth. Out on the flat ground a big, potbellied mossyhorn broke suddenly from two men who had cut him from the herd. With his rope swinging Lew turned him and was up close to the two riders when he recognized Clay and Ed Splann.

  They followed the galloping animal in to the nearest fire, where Splann caught his forelegs in a loop and threw him expertly. This huge bearded fellow was a cowhand, all right, Lew admitted. But there was something else. Watching, while the hot Cross T iron was run on the steer’s shoulder, he felt again the strain of Clay Manning’s unnatural silence, sitting his horse there close, saying nothing.

  He turned his gaze up the valley and saw Tom Arnold coming from the creek-bottom trees and paused then with his eyes fixed upon the pole fences of the dipping-chute, like two wide-open arms reaching out for an eighth of a mile.

  Then Clay Manning said idly, “What took you to the rims this morning?”

  “The view,” he said, his eyes still speculating on the dipping-chutes. “Always did like it from up there.”

  “That all?” Clay’s voice was roughly edged. “I’d like to know.”

  Lew brought his eyes around and saw this big blond was having a hard time with his feelings, the temper in him staining his ruddy cheeks a deeper red. With troubles enough to come later he wanted no clash at the start. There was one thing he felt he could appeal to, a loyalty that was in all of Tom Arnold’s men and that Clay himself had shown—not so much the loyalty to one man, the owner, but to the outfit itself and the job to be done. It was what he had seen on the trail. No Texan would risk his good life night and day on that long march for the money in it. But he would give all he had when the time came, out of no other reason than loyalty to the brand.

  “Clay,” he said, “you’ve got nothing against me. You don’t like my coming back to be trail boss for Tom, sure. But it’s only because trailing has been my business these years. You’ll still be Tom’s foreman and segundo on this trip. If the Cross T ever gets north, Clay, we’ll have to work together. That’s a fact.”

  He saw his plea have a strange effect in the blue eyes, troubling them with a hounded look. And it seemed to bring Clay out into the open for an instant.

  Bitterly he said, “Lew, there’s more happened here than you know. I can’t make any promises.” He closed his mouth on that.

  “All right,” Lew accepted. “There’s something I do know. From the rims I could see herds going north while we’re not even ready. There’s a faster way to do this branding if you want to try. Trick I saw worked last year.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Use the dipping-chute. Roping’s too slow. We could run this whole bunch through by dark tonight.”

  Ed Splann had flipped his loop free from the branded steer and had turned toward them. He brought his horse to a stop close beside Clay’s in time to hear this last talk. He leaned forward in his saddle.

  “What kind of schoolboy game is that? What’s the matter, Burnet, can’t you use a rope?”

  Lew looked at him steadily, saying nothing. Somehow in this man he saw a trouble center on the Cross T. There was a surly sureness about him, more than the arrogance of brute strength. He wondered again why Clay would tolerate his sort in the crew.

  Then, as if made more bold and sure by that silence, Splann goaded, “Leave him try his schoolboy trick! Come on, Clay.”

  Suddenly his early morning’s calm decision to keep things running without trouble was gone. He understood that he was being ribbed into a fight. It was what Splann wanted, a showdown. It might as well come now as later.

  He swung his horse to get Clay from between them. But in that same instant, incredibly fast, a gun was in the man’s right fist. There was no smokiness in his eyes now. They were cold, hard gray, unblinking.

  “Now you,” he began, but Clay’s quick warning cut him off.

  “Careful, Ed! Somebody’s coming!”

  It was Tom Arnold pounding toward them, his horse flung forward in a rush that swept along a dust cloud when he stopped.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” He glared at Splann’s drawn gun. With a hot violence unlike him in a crisis he blazed, “Clay, is this all you’ve got to do?” He swung his angry stare. “Lew, what’s wrong?”

  “Little argument, Tom. Nothing much.”

  “Well! What about?”

  “Difference of opinion mostly. Had an idea we could hurry up this branding by using your dipping-chute. You build your fires alongside, push the animals through and run the iron on them as they pass. I’ve seen it work.”

  Arnold considered it, the anger going out of him. “Well, Clay,” he asked, “what’s the objection?”

  “Not my method, that’s all.”

  “Maybe not. But if Lew’s seen it work let’s give it a try. Anything to make up time.”

  Clay hesitated. Beside him, Splann moved his horse closer. There was a little silence.

  Then Clay shook his head. “Tom, I’ll tell you. If you want to switch foremen right now instead of on the trail that suits me.”

  It wasn’t stubbornness. There was something back of this move that Lew sought and couldn’t find. He looked past Clay’s set face and saw Splann watching with a malicious interest, and it came to him that he would find several answers when he unraveled that man.

  Tom Arnold spoke quietly. “There’s no call for cussedness, Clay, that I can see. But it’s your choice. Lew, take the job.” He swung his back to them and rode off.

  Clay Manning turned in his saddle. Something had happened to him in that moment of giving up his leadership of the Cross T. There was a grimness added to him that had not been there before.

  Without temper he said, “Lew, I’m going north with this herd for a reason that you understand. But not as your segundo. Either you or I’ll end up in full charge.”

  Beside him, suddenly Splann kicked their two horses forward. “Come on, Clay, come on!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ready For The Trail

  Like any captain leading an army troop, a trail boss needed a lieutenant, his segundo. And since Clay had refused, Lew hunted up one man in the Cross T that he could count on absolutely.

  When Rebel John Quarternight’s white head appeared among those riders darting in and out of the dust cloud he rode over and waved him to a stop.

  “John,” he said, “I’ve taken over the herd. We’re going to push this branding along.”

  He explained his way and added, grinning with the strong affection that he had for this man, “No argument now. I’ve heard it. I’ll take no talk from a pullet like you!”

  It was John Quarternight who had taught him all he knew about cattle, most of what he knew about men—a straight-backed, sturdy old warrior, close to seventy now, with deceivingly mild blue eyes and a drooping mustache turned yellow by the sun. His full life went into the past as far as the war for Texas independence, up through the Rebellion and after that the Apache days. Some parts of that life had stuck to him like burs to a longhorn. He wore knee-length Mexican leggings instead of the full-length chaparajos of this later day, gray Confederate pants and a ten-foot red sash wound around his middle for a belt. White-haired Rebel John, wi
th his flat cowman’s hat rolled up in front, his sash and leggings and gray pants, was a proud and living history of all that Texas had ever been.

  He chuckled. “No, got no argument. I’m beginnin’ to think maybe we’d see Ogallala next Christmas! It’s plain disgraceful pokin’ irons at cows through a fence. But we’ll give her a try.” He swung his horse. “Build your fires, son. I’ll tell the boys.”

  Circling toward the chute, Lew picked up two hands of his own age, Neal Good and Charley Storms, a lighthearted, clownish pair, and Jim Hope, seventeen this spring, the Cross T’s youngest rider. He sent Neal and Charley off to the creek to drag in fresh wood with their ropes but said to Jim Hope, “You come along with me.”

  He was a redheaded kid, still growing and loose in the joints, with brown freckles as big as two-bit pieces all over his grinning face.

  In sudden young elation he burst out as they rode on together, “When’ll we hit Dodge, Lew? Say! There’s a man’s town, huh? I haven’t drawed a cent from Arnold all winter. Been savin’ up for Dodge.”

  Lew laughed at him. “You won’t be disappointed.”

  “You think maybe we’ll get us a good old fight in the Indian Nations?”

  “There’s always a chance.”

  “Judas priest! That’s fun, I bet!”

  Remembering his own young excitement, his first trip up the trail, he didn’t spoil Jim Hope’s picture. Somehow trail hands never brought back the true story. Home again, they remembered only the fun. He, too, had heard of the big times in Dodge and Ellsworth and Ogallala, little of dry drives and men lost in swollen rivers and slow, endless travel, day after day, in sun and wind and cold.

  They had reached the chute. It was a long, narrow runway out of which the wide arms of the fences opened like a funnel. There was a heavy gate at the farther end where the branded cattle could be let out again onto the plain.

  Lew said, “That’ll be your job, Jim.”

  By the time Neal Good and Charley Storms had dragged in a supply of sticks and had built two fires beside the high, horizontal bars of the chute, John Quarternight had gathered his crew and was bringing up the first bunch of longhorns.