The 7th Western Novel

by Francis W. Hilton

  He said again gently, “Come on. This isn’t work. Something’s happened.”

  He saw the high color drain away and rush back. With no talk then Steve got up and walked to his horse.

  But out of the trees, looking straight ahead, he asked, “Dad?”

  “Yes. Steve—” Lew put out his hand.

  There had been years when he and this boy were like brothers, and Tom Arnold had been a father to them both. It seemed to him that now, if at any time, the unexplainable barrier between them ought to be down. His hand touched Steve’s arm. It jerked from him as if he had struck a blow. He did not finish what he wanted to say. It was no use. Inside him a desolate lonely feeling came crowding back.

  He held deliberately to a slow walk up the creek, letting the men get most of their work done. There was no need for the boy to look at the trampled thing they had found. The grave on a little knoll close to the bank was already covered. They were mounding it over with rocks. Afterward, with that finished, they made a bareheaded circle waiting for someone who could talk.

  He couldn’t. He didn’t know the words. Religion of a church sort had never been in his life nor in the lives of any of these men. The words they used had never been in prayer, and yet, in their hushed silence and in their bowed heads, he felt a wordless kind of praying, deep from their hearts.

  Tom, he thought, would want it like this. Quarter-night, Brownstone, Joe Wheat, and Moonlight Bailey, these were his friends of many years and this was Texas soil. It was all he would have asked.

  Someone coughed and the little group moved. No one had spoken. That brief moment was gone.

  “Clay,” he said, “you go in now. Let Joy know. You and Steve.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Clash

  He had seen Ed Splann stay off with the horses apart from the little group around the grave, and it seemed a kind of rank insult, the way the big man stood there casually rolling a cigarette, watching them, and blowing out his gusty breaths of smoke.

  As Steve and Clay got into their saddles and started toward camp, Splann reached up for his own horn to follow them.

  He called the man’s name, walking toward him fast. Close, he said, “Not you. You stay here.”

  The heavy arm came down from the horn and hung loose. Splann turned himself around with a ponderous deliberation.

  “You talkin’ to me?” His dusty, fouled beard hid all expression. Then a quick hard mockery glittered in his pale eyes. “Maybe,” he said, “I don’t hear you anymore. New owners make a new boss. You thought of that?”

  He knew a certain end was coming, that he’d held back so far on the trail.

  Quietly he said, “There’ll be no change. There’s something here you’ve missed.” The urge toward the end he wanted drove him on. “If you can’t take it like that you can ride out.”

  He saw the instant way the pale gray eyes sharpened. Splann’s voice dropped, low and oddly droning.

  “So you figure it’s that easy?”

  “I’ve done my figuring,” he said. “There it is.”

  This big man was no hotheaded amateur when a definite time came. He could see the veiled coldness behind the drooping lids and the slack readiness that slid over the huge body. Then some thought loosened the bearded lips in a half grin.

  “All right.” Splann turned a little from him. “You’re smart. I’ve thought maybe you were only a damn fool.” His right arm lifted again as if to reach the saddle horn.

  He understood this man’s kind too well. He knew the move was false even as the arm rose and so was ready when that hand curved suddenly downward to the holstered gun.

  His own holster flap was buckled. In that fraction of a second he wasted no time in trying to loosen it. He grabbed left-handed at the dull steel of Splann’s rising weapon and threw all of his weight behind a blow of his right fist upward against the bearded jaw.

  It rocked the big head. But the man was solidly planted. He felt the gun’s hammer rise in his palm and hooked his thumb around it. It snapped with no explosion and he hardly felt the metal’s sharp cut in the flesh of his thumb. For the hatred damned back in him so long had released something savage and cruel.

  He threw his fist again into a body blow. The gun came free into his hand with his thumb still blocking the hammer. He swung it, lashing across Splann’s face. It half turned the man around, and he brought the heavy weapon’s barrel once more against the side of his head. That dropped him forward onto his knees.

  Standing back, he was aware then of the others who had come running up. He heard Quarternight’s voice.

  “What’s he done?”

  He answered without turning, “Splann’s quit. He’s through.”

  He released the gun’s hammer and shook away the blood. Behind him Jim Hope blurted out as high and shrill as a girl, “Judas priest! Was he figurin’ to kill you?”

  “Kid!” Quarternight said. “Shut up.”

  Splann bent and wiped his face and got onto his legs unsteadily. He, held the back of one hand against his cheek. His hot eyes glared over it.

  “You’ve started something, Burnet. I warned you once to stay clear.”

  “You’ve got a month’s pay coming,” he said. “You can take the horse for that. Now get out!”

  The heated rush of anger was gone now in the way of a storm’s tumult that has passed and left only a knowledge of the damage in its wake. This wasn’t a clean end; a killer’s savage blood was not in him.

  “When you go,” he said, “stay away from camp. I’ll throw your bedroll off. I’m letting you out easy. I know—you’ll head back to your Open A friends now and work from there.”

  Splann dropped his arm. “You want to save that?”

  “How?”

  “Let me see Clay Manning.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll see no one.”

  Splann turned. He was in the saddle when he said, “You’re draggin’ down more than you know. I’ll see Clay. Tell him so. And there’ll be two others when I do!” He pulled his horse around and jumped him into a lope.

  Silently watching him run on across the creek and strike east along the flat bench of land, none of the men asked the meaning of what he had said except Jim Hope, his insufferably questioning young voice coming in a moment.

  “What others, huh? Who’s he figuring on, Lew?”

  He faced the boy. “Jim,” he said, “you’re going to have a man’s job now. You’ve got to act like one. I’m giving you a chance to fill this swing place that’s empty. And when you’re grown up you don’t keep asking for the answers. There’s better ways of finding out.”

  “You mean—” the boy began.

  “Oh, hell,” Quarternight growled, “shut up! Lew,” he said, “you had him. Why didn’t you finish it?”

  “Not my way, I guess,” he said. “Anyhow, Splann’s only one. It wouldn’t have settled anything.”

  Enough time had passed, he felt, for Steve and Clay in camp. He moved back to his horse. From the saddle, with the others up around him, he said, “I know we’ve all done enough riding in the past twenty-four hours, but I’m going to ask you to ride some more. We’re lucky in getting ourselves bunched. That thunderstorm was bad and it must have given a stampede down at Doan’s. Those herds were all camped too close together. If they ran they mixed, and it’ll take a week to get them untangled. This gives us a chance to trail ahead. So we’ll go in and eat and then we’ll cross.” There was another reason also he had for moving now. Times like this, work was better than anything else. He didn’t want Joy, or the men either, with an idleness to go back over what had happened. Now the shock still held them in a numb way. Throwing themselves into the job of crossing would ease the bad hours that were bound to come.

  Riding toward the camp’s smoke, he was not quite sure what he would find there. But instantly, entering
the little open space, he knew he should have understood the girl better than that. There had been no outburst of grief here, no crying. With the men going past him to get their meal from the fire pit he stepped down from his saddle and walked toward her.

  She stood at the end of her wagon, both arms rigidly down at her sides. Clay had just stepped back from her. He didn’t locate Steve.

  She remained like that, motionless and dry-eyed until he was close; and then it was as if something violently released drove her against him. His arms were around her and he felt the silent, wracking way in which she let go. He bent his head and laid his cheek against her hair and let that moment’s grief spend itself. He saw Clay start back toward them.

  She drew her head up and raised her eyes to his. “I’m all right.” He seemed to look far down in them and see all of this girl’s quiet courage and something else in their steady gaze, unreadable to him.

  Then Clay was at his side. His hand took her arm. “Honey, you’d better rest.” His blue eyes turned with a hot stare. “That goes for the whole camp, I figure. Any objections, Lew?”

  He saw where Clay was leading. The challenge was thinly veiled. And that a man even with Clay’s surly temper should force any issue now showed him how unexplainably bitter the reasons must be.

  “We’ll rest,” he said, “beyond the river. We’re going across as soon as we eat.”

  “Not if I know it!” Clay jerked his glance to the girl. “Joy, this is up to us. You don’t have to go on.”

  “Clay!” She stared at him with a suddenly lost look. “What are you doing?”

  “Joy,” Lew said, “never mind. We’re all of us on edge. It’ll be all right.”

  He moved to Clay’s side and put his hand on his arm, his body covering the hard grip of his lingers. He turned Clay and walked him, the grip digging in. They were beyond her hearing when the arm jerked free.

  He halted.

  “Clay, damn your soul.”

  He could speak without anger now. His own life had been bitter and twisted enough at times so that he could know the hounding torment of another’s mind. He had that understanding without knowing what was behind it.

  “This is plenty hard for her,” he said. “You haven’t made it any easier. What kind of a devil’s driving you, Clay? I’ll tell you one thing. You needn’t hide so much maybe. Splann’s quit.”

  “Quit?” Clay turned and was suddenly rigid and still. “You mean he pulled out himself?”

  “Well, no,” he said. “I fired him. We had a run-in.” He waited, watching that desperate, driven look set across Clay’s big face. “Splann will go to the Open A. I know that. What does it mean?”

  There was no hot violence that he had expected in the answer.

  “It means,” Clay said, “you’ve played hell.” He swung his broad shoulders and walked away.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Indian Country

  Lying there with the mid-afternoon sun bright upon its surface and the green grass stretching away beyond the north shore, the Red looked as inviting as a man could want. But a trail boss never could be sure. He had learned that himself in the way all men had learned it, by grief.

  Yet he felt that now was the one time to cross. A man shouldn’t wait for the high water to drop to normal level. Flood had scoured the river to its hard-pan bottom. Later, when the current slowed completely, the silt would pile up. That made your quicksand, the dreaded deathtrap for cattle.

  It looked only like a smooth red lake half a mile wide and broken in the middle by a little island. There might be some deep channels. The cattle and horses could swim those if they had to. And they could make a cottonwood raft for the wagons. He decided to try the horse herd first.

  Wheeling from the bank, he saw Clay in camp arguing with the men around him. But Quarternight was in there. Clay wouldn’t get far with old Rebel John. Off on the flat the pooled longhorns had lain down, resting. Moonlight Bailey and Jim Hope were grazing the horses apart from them along the creek.

  He sailed a yell into camp and saw the men start toward him, all except Clay and Steve. And then, waiting for the riders to come out, and with that sign of Clay’s growing rebellion so clear, his mind went to a thing he had not thought of before. Tom Arnold had said for him to look in an old account book that Joy’s wagon carried if anything happened. A moment’s speculation held him, but afterward in the rush of work he did not think of it again.

  Riding on toward the horse herd, he could see the dead-tired heaviness of his crew. Yet there was no complaint and there would be none. “We’ll get across and camp early,” he promised and grinned at Brownstone next to his stirrup. “Ash, you won’t need those sleeping pills of yours tonight.”

  “I don’t know,” the old man said gravely and felt in his vest pocket to make sure of the box.

  The horses had no fear of the river. Under pressure of the riders strung out behind them they raced to the water and plunged in, sending muddy geysers higher than their heads.

  He pulled off on the bank and watched them closely, seeing the flood touch their bellies but come no farther than that. It was safe enough, he thought, to cross the wagons.

  When his wave brought them out of camp he saw Clay on the seat with Joy, driving for her, his big shape stiff and set. Without a wait for help he turned down the slippery bank. The mules balked at the water’s edge. Clay leaped up on the footboard. The heavy wagon shoved the mules on and they were out in the flood in a scrambling tangle.

  Quarternight and Joe Wheat got there first. They grabbed the mules’ bridles, straightening them out, then lashed them on across the river. It had been a bad moment, threatening to spill the outfit into the water.

  Afterward, coming back to help with the cattle, Quarternight growled, “Lew, one of these times—” and let it go.

  He shrugged. It didn’t matter now. Owl-Head Jackson had followed with the commissary, taking time to let his own team feel their way. The real job was ahead.

  He saw that all the longhorns had risen and turned to watch, their dumb brains growing more and more suspicious. They were back a mile from the river, far enough for him to string his men behind them and start the pool gently at first in a walk. But when they were aimed right, with the arrowhead taking shape, he waved a signal to Rebel John. On either side they sent their horses racing forward to the point, while behind them and along the flanks all the others crowded in suddenly, slapping their rope ends against their chaps.

  Four thousand closely bunched longhorns were instantly running; and to a trailman’s eye no sight was ever prettier than that brown wedge, truly a flying arrow now, as it hit the river, carried on by its own momentum, unable to stop or turn aside.

  Through a great spray that rose around him he saw Quarternight riding low. He felt his horse dig in sure-footedly, breasting the current ahead of that bawling, clacking mass. This was when a horse earned a man’s deepest gratitude. “A horse to ride the river with,” meant this moment. It took steady nerves and a sort of human loyalty for an animal not to bolt in terror and try to pitch his rider in front of the oncoming herd.

  He passed the tip of the island, halfway, and caught a glimpse of the brown bodies behind him, and then he could see no more through the splash that the horse made in a deeper channel beyond. It was only when the river bottom lifted him sharply and he was up the muddy bank that the whole herd came into sight again. The drags were just entering the water off there more than half a mile away. The line was unbroken; four thousand longhorns came plowing on, held to that crossing unbelievably by seven men.

  Still guiding the point with Quarternight, he drew his first easy breath. And when the last steer had risen up the bank and the herd began to graze out with their fright gone, he shook his head and grinned. That much was over. They had crossed the Red.

  An hour’s travel took them winding through low bald hills on this si
de of the river. A little later, pointing onto a flat plain beyond them, he rode around to Quarternight.

  “John,” he said, “I’m leaving you for a while. There’s something I want to look at. You wave Joe Wheat up here when I’m gone, and if I don’t get back by dark choose your own bed ground.” He pulled off, adding, “Keep it out in the open away from creek-bottom trees. But you know that.” This was Indian country now.

  A hill slope and the herd’s crooked formation hid his move as he rode east. He passed around the hill, turned south, and so came in behind the drive for a brief look at the back trail. There was no one following; nothing moved, as far as he could see, among the trees of their deserted camp.

  Yet heading east again he kept deep in the hill folds out of sight of the river. When their rolling slopes began to flatten he knew the main trail north from Doan’s Crossing was not far off. There was a belt of mesquite ahead. Riding through it, he saw the long corkscrew pods hanging green and full. If he were a Comanche now he’d pick a mess and take them back for supper. Boiled a couple of hours and drained often, to take the bitterness out, they were as good as string beans.

  The trail was immediately beyond the mesquite, not in one ribbon of tracks, but miles wide from the hoofs of millions of longhorns bound north. Each herd had moved a little east or west for grass, until it was like a great dusty road that a man could follow all the way from Texas to Ogallala on the banks of the South Platte. But no herds moved there now, and running his gaze along south two or three miles to Doan’s Crossing, he saw that an earlier speculation had been right.

  A darkly massed pool of cattle spread over the flat shelf with little streams trickling into it from the distant hills. A dozen outfits too close together had run and mixed in last night’s storm. It would take time to part them out. He was lucky.

  Paused there while his tired horse hunched himself down in a three-legged rest, he brought his eyes up the North Fork of the Red, only a shadowy line at this distance crawling along the base of the Wichita Mountains, perhaps five miles away.

  Darkened by the late afternoon sun, the Wichitas showed nothing of the maze of broken canyons and scrubby forest and looked wholly tame. But he knew of the tribes swarming in there, in that last land of the Comanches, with the Dakota Cheyennes added now. The North Fork was a bloody stream. The Texans had made it so, following it with their herds across a country which had been guaranteed forever to the Indians.