The Trail Driver

by Zane Grey

  “Boss, I cain’t stand around an’ see yore good boys bored,” Smith’s cool, vibrant drawl broke the strained silence.

  “So help me—Gawd!” burst out Ackerman, excitedly. “He got it. I was leary aboot him.”

  “Pan Handle, I’d forgotten yu were aboot,” declared Brite, in excited relief. “Thet was wal done. … I saw Hallett with Ross Hite last night.”

  “Ben, come clean with yore story,” ordered Texas Joe. “Yu damn near got yore everlastin’ then.”

  “Texas, yu were in line, too. I saw thet in his eye,” said Smith, dryly.

  “Hah! Mebbe I didn’t see it,” replied Texas, huskily. “Pan, thet’s one I owe yu. …An’ if I ever get caught ag’in withoot my gun!”

  “Come on, Ben, get it off yore chest,” interposed Brite.

  Chandler sagged on a pack and dropped his head into his hands.

  “Boss, there ain’t much to tell,” he replied, in a low voice. “Hallett got around me. Persuaded me to go in with him on a deal with Hite. One night back on the Trail Hite got hold of Hallett when he was standin’ guard. Offered him five hundred to leave a breach in the line so Hite an’ his ootfit could cut oot a big bunch of stock. …First, I—I agreed. I shore was yellow. But it rode me day an’ night—thet low-down deal. …An’ when it come to the scratch I—I weakened. I couldn’t go through with it. …Thet’s all, sir.”

  “My Gawd, Ben! … To think yu’d double-cross us like thet!” exclaimed Deuce Ackerman, wringing his hands. “I never knowed Hallett very good. But yu, Ben—why, we’ve rode together—slept together for years.”

  “It’s done. I’ve told yu. I’m makin’ no excuses—only Roy always had likker to feed me,” replied Ben, miserably.

  “Ben, in thet case I forgive yu,” spoke up Brite, feelingly. “An’ I hope to heaven yu never fall down thet way again.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Brite. I promise yu—I won’t,” returned Chandler, brokenly.

  “Ben, what yu suppose Reddie Bayne will say to this?” queried Texas Joe, in ringing scorn. “She sort of cottoned to yu most of all.”

  “I’ve no idee, Tex. But I’ll tell her myself.”

  “Heah she comes with the remuda,” added Deuce.

  “Wonder why Reddie’s rustlin’ in so pert with all them hawses?” inquired Texas.

  “Somebody cover up thet daid man,” said Ackerman.

  “Not so yu’d notice it, cowboy. Let the little lady take her medicine. Wasn’t she kinda sweet on Hallett?” rejoined Texas.

  “Not so yu’d notice it, Tex.”

  No more was said directly. Reddie circled the remuda about a hundred yards outside of camp, and came tearing on, her big black horse swinging with his beautiful action. She made the drivers jump before she pulled him to a halt.

  “Mr. Brite—Texas—Pan Handle,” she panted, her eyes wide with excitement. “I’ve shore got news. Nichols with his herd of two thousand odd haid is right on our heels. An’ followin’ him close is Horton in charge of a big herd for Dave Slaughter.”

  “Thunderation!” ejaculated Brite, throwing up his hands.

  Texas Joe used language equally expressive, but hardly for a young girl’s ears. Then he pulled on his boot, a task that made him struggle.

  “Both drivers sent a man over to tell us to hop the river pronto or they’d be on our heels,” went on Reddie, her cheeks aglow. “Oh! Look at the river! It was dark when I went oot. …Mr. Brite, it cain’t be possible to swim our ootfit across thet flood.”

  “Reddie, it may not be possible, but we must make the attempt,” replied Brite.

  “Ah-h!” screamed Reddie, suddenly espying the bloody-faced Hallett on the ground. “What’s—happened? Isn’t thet Roy?”

  “I reckon ‘tis, lass.”

  “Oh!—He’s daid!”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Who?” flashed Reddie, plainly stirred to righteous wrath.

  “Reddie, I’m the bad hombre,” drawled Pan Handle.

  “Yu—yu bloody gunman! Why on earth did yu shoot thet poor boy?”

  Pan Handle turned away; Texas dropped his head; Brite watched, but spoke no word. Then Ben looked up.

  “Why, Ben! Yu shot too?”

  “Only a scratch, Reddie. Yu see it was this way,” he began, and bravely outlined his part in the tragedy, scoring Hallett mercilessly, but not sparing himself.

  “Ben Chandler!” she cried, in shocked voice. Then as the realization dawned on her and she gazed from Texas to Brite, to the ghastly Hallett, and back with blazing eyes to Ben, the enormity of such an offense seemed to mount prodigiously.

  “Yu agreed to double-cross our boss!” she burst out, in withering scorn. “To steal from the hand thet paid yu! Lawd! but thet’s a low-down trick!”

  “But, Reddie, give the devil his due,” interrupted Texas, sharply. “Ben was easy-goin’. He cottoned to Hallett. An’ his weakness was the bottle. An’ after all he didn’t—he couldn’t go through with it.”

  “I don’t care a damn,” cried Reddie, the very embodiment of ruthlessness. “I’d never forgive him in a million years. …Why, the dirty sneakin’ cowhand was coaxin’ me for a kiss—only two nights ago!”

  “Wal, in thet case, it’s plumb important to know if Ben got it,” drawled Texas.

  “Yu bet yore life he didn’t,” retorted Reddie, her face on fire. “If he had I’d jump in the river this minute.”

  “Reddie, I’ve overlooked Ben’s break,” interrupted Brite.

  “Ahuh. Wal, all I say is yu’re a lot of soft melon haids,” replied Reddie, with passion. “I’ll never overlook it. An’ I’ll never speak to him again or stand guard near him or——”

  “Come an’ git it while it’s hot,” sang Moze.

  Texas Joe was studying the river. It was two hundred yards wide at that point, a swirling, muddy, swift flood, carrying logs and trees and driftwood of all descriptions. The current had to be reckoned with. If it carried the stock below a certain point there would almost certainly be a disaster. For two miles below on the opposite side the bank was steep and straight up as far as the eye could see.

  “Boss, I swear I don’t know aboot it,” said Texas. “But we cain’t turn back now. The boys have their orders an’ heah comes the herd in sight.”

  “We’ll try it, win or lose,” replied Brite, grimly, stirred with the gamble.

  “Hey, Reddie,” yelled Texas, waving his hand. “Come on.”

  Reddie sent back a pealing cry and wheeled to ride behind the remuda. They came on in a bunch, restless and scared, though not wild. Pan Handle rode below the taking-off slope while Texas rode on the up-stream side. Reddie drove her mustangs down the slope on a run. Some sheered aside below and above, only to be driven back by Pan Handle and Texas. In a moment more the leaders were pointed and with shrill snorts they plunged into the shallow river. The others followed in good order. Texas rode out with them until the water deepened perceptibly. He was yelling at the top of his voice. Pan Handle shot in front of mustangs leading out of line. Reddie, with her wild cries, drove them off the land, and when her black splashed the water high the leaders had gone off the bar and were swimming.

  “WHOOPEE KID!” yelled Texas, brandishing his sombrero. “Keep upstream yoreself an’ let ‘em go.”

  When Texas got back to the shore the rear and broad end of the remuda was well out, and the leaders about to hit the swift current.

  “Tex, we ought to have gone with her,” expostulated Pan Handle, seriously.

  “Thet’s a grand hawse she’s forkin’,” said Brite, hopefully.

  Texas Joe did not voice his fears or hopes, but he fixed his hawk eyes intently on that marvelous scene of action. Brite’s last count had totalled one hundred and seventy-nine mustangs in the remuda. The doughty little Spanish stock had no dislike for water. Whistling and rearing, the thickly-bunched body of ponies went off into deep water with the intrepid girl close behind, waving her sombrero and pealing her shrill cry to the skies. How her red-gold h
ead shone in the sunlight! Once the black horse struck out into deeper water, Brite got rid of his fright. He could swim like a duck. Reddie kept him upstream to the left end of the bobbing line. Trees and logs floated into their midst, hampering the mustangs. Here and there one would fetch up to paw over the obstruction, slide off, go under, and come up to go on. Downriver swept those in the current, swiftly leaving those in the still water. But they kept on swimming, and they had plenty of leeway to clear the steep bank far below. Soon the whole remuda was in the current, and then the spectacle seemed moving and splendid to Brite. If his heart had not gone out to this orphaned girl long before she braved that flood as a part of her job and scorning help, it would have yielded to her then. The long black patch of lean heads disintegrated and lengthened and curved away downriver, a wild and beautiful sight.

  A mile below where Brite and his men watched breathlessly the leaders waded out into shallow water, and the long string curved faithfully toward that point. One by one, in twos and threes, and then in bunches, the mustangs struck the bar, to bob up and heave wet shoulders out, to flounder and splash ashore. Soon the wedge-shaped line thickened as the ponies passed the swift current; and it was only a matter of a few minutes before the last horse was wading out. And Reddie Bayne bestrode him!

  “Dog-gone! Thet was great,” breathed Texas.

  “Shore was a pretty sight,” agreed Pan Handle.

  “Wal, I reckon we had our fears for nothin’,” added Brite.

  “Boss, we ought to stop her. It’s different comin’ this way. Not enough room to allow for thet current,” replied Pan Handle, anxiously.

  “By Gawd, can yu beat thet!” exclaimed Texas, and whipping out his gun he shot twice. Then he waved his sombrero and yelled in stentorian tones: “Go BACK! Go BACK!”

  Reddie heard, for she waved her hand in reply, and she kept coming on. In another moment her horse would be in over his depth, and the swift current, with big, muddy waves, right ahead of her. Texas shot all the remaining charges left in his gun, and he aimed so the bullets would hit the water not a great way below Reddie. Then he roared like a giant :

  “TURN ABOOT!—Reddie, it ain’t the same. …DAMN YU—I’M GIVIN’ ORDERS!”

  Reddie’s high-pitched, pealing cry came sweet and wild on the wind.

  “Too late, Tex. She’s in now.”

  “Thet’s a hawse, Brite. I say let her come,” put in Pan Handle.

  Texas Joe became as an equestrian statue in bronze. The big muddy waves curled over the neck and head of the black, and up to the shoulders of the girl. They were swept downstream with a rush. But in a hundred yards the powerful horse had left the high waves and was entering the swirling, lesser current. Brite saw the girl check him to let a log pass, and again turn him downstream to avoid a huge mass of green foliage. That horse and rider knew what they were doing. Again he breasted the current with power and worked across. But he would never make the point of bar where the remuda had taken off. This worried Brite. Only so few rods below where the high bank began! Already Pan Handle was riding down to head her off. The black, however, was coming faster than the watchers had figured. His lean head jerked high, his wet shoulders followed and with a lunge he was out of the depths into the shallows. He had made it with room to spare. Reddie came trotting ashore.

  Here Texas got off his horse, and in the very extreme of rage or exasperation or something, he slammed his sombrero down, he stamped to and fro, he cursed like a drunken cowhand. Plain it was to Brite that his foreman had surrendered to the release of pent-up agony.

  “Come back, Pan,” Reddie was calling, gayly. “Shore had fun. What yu think of my hawse?”

  “He’s grand, but yu took a big chance, all for nothin’.”

  “Yu’ll need me an’ don’t overlook thet,” declared Reddie. Then as she joined Pan Handle she espied Texas going through remarkable actions. “Gee! Our Trail boss is riled aboot somethin’.”

  Soon Reddie rode up to rein in before Texas and Brite. She was something to gaze at. Pale with suppressed excitement, her eyes large and dark and daring, she sat awaiting sentence to fall. She was wringing wet to her neck. Her blouse no longer hid the swelling contour of her breast.

  “Sorry I scared yu, gentlemen,” she said, a little fearfully. “But yu need me over heah an’ I had to come.”

  “Reddie Bayne, I yelled to yu,” began Texas, sternly.

  “Shore. I heahed yu.”

  “I ordered yu back. Did yu heah thet?”

  “Course I did. Laws! yu’d woke the daid.”

  “Wal, then, yu have no respect for me as Trail boss of this drive?”

  “I wouldn’t of turned back for Mr. Brite himself,” retorted Reddie, spiritedly. But her face had paled and her eyes were dilating.

  “Yu disobeyed me again?” thundered Texas.

  “Yes, I did—dammit.”

  “Not only thet—yu scared us oot of our wits, just to be smart. Yu’re a spoiled girl. But yu cain’t disorganize this ootfit no more.”

  “Cain’t I?” echoed Reddie, weakly.

  “Reddie Bayne, yu listen. Just ‘cause yu’ve got the boss eatin’ oot of yore hand—an’ ’cause yu’re the distractinest pretty girl—an’ ’cause I happen to be turrible in love with yu, don’t make no damn bit of difference. Yu’re wearin’ driver’s pants, yu’re takin’ driver’s wages, yu’re pullin’ driver’s tricks.”

  Texas stepped over to her horse, and flashing a lean, brown hand up, like a striking smoke, he clutched the front of her blouse high up and jerked her sliding out of her saddle.

  “Oh-h!” cried Reddie, in a strangled voice. “How dare … Let me go!—Texas, wha—what air yu goin’ to——”

  “I cain’t slug yu one as I would a man—an’ I cain’t spank yu no more as I once did,” said Texas, deliberately. “But I’m shore gonna shake the daylights oot of yu.”

  Then he grasped her shoulders and began to make good his threat. Reddie offered no resistance whatever. She was as one struck dumb and helpless. Brite grasped that Texas’ betrayal of his love had had more to do with this collapse than any threat of corporal punishment. She gazed up with eyes that Texas must have found hard to look into. But soon she could not see, for he shook her until she resembled an image of jelly under some tremendous, vibrating force. When from sheer exhaustion he let her go she sank down upon the sand, still shaking.

  “There—Miss Bayne,” he panted.

  “Where—Texas Jack?” she gasped, flippantly.

  “Gawd only knows,” he burst out, helplessly, and began to tear his hair.

  “Heah comes the herd!” rang out the thrilling word from Pan Handle.

  Chapter Eight

  THE old bull Mossy-horns, huge and fierce, with his massive horns held high, led the spear-shaped mass of cattle over the brow of the long slope. Densely packed, resistless in slow advance, they rolled like a flood of uprooted stumps into sight.

  “By all thet’s lucky!” yelled Texas, in elation. “Pointed already! If they hit the river in a wedge like thet they’ll make Moses crossin’ the Red Sea only a two-bit procession.”

  “Orders, Texas, orders,” replied Brite, uneasily. “It won’t be long till they roll down on us.”

  “Got no orders, ‘cept keep on the upriver side. For Gawd’s sake don’t ride in below ‘em. The boys have been warned. …Ben, yu ride on the wagon. We’ll come back an’ float it across.”

  “I will like hell,” shouted Ben, derisively, and he ran for a horse to saddle. Brite did likewise, and while he was at the task he heard Texas cursing Chandler for not obeying orders. When he was in the saddle the magnificent herd, a moving, colorful triangle of living beasts, had cleared the ridge, and the leaders were close. Drivers on each side of the wedge rode frantically forward and back, yelling, shooting, waving. But the noise they made came faintly through the din of bawls.

  “Reddie,” called Texas, earnestly, turning a stern, tight-lipped face and falcon eyes upon the girl, “this heah’s new to
yu. Yore hawse is a duck, I know, but thet won’t save yu if yu get in bad. Will yu stick close to me, so I can tell yu if yu start wrong?”

  “I shore will,” replied Reddie, with surprising complaisance.

  “Boss, yu hang to their heels,” concluded Texas, curtly. “Pan, yu drop back aboot halfway. Above all, don’t drift into the herd. …Come on, Reddie!”

  Bad rivers had no terrors for old Mossy-horns. A rod ahead of his herd he ran, nimble as a calf, down the sandy slope, roaring like a buffalo. All sound was deadened in the trampling thunder of the cattle as they yielded to the grade and came on pell-mell. The ground shook under Brite. Nearly five thousand head of stock in a triangular mass sweeping like stampeding buffalo down a long hill! Certain it was that Brite’s sombrero stood up on his stiff hair. No daring, no management, no good luck could ever prevent some kind of a catastrophe here.

  Texas plunged his horse into the river ahead of Mossy-horns, swinging his lasso round his head and purple in the face from yelling. But Brite could not hear him. Reddie’s big black lashed the muddy water into sheets as she headed him after Texas. Then the great wedge, like an avalanche, hit the shallow water with a tremendous sound. Hundreds of cows and steers had reared to ride on the haunches on those ahead, and the mass behind pushed all in a cracking, inextricable mass. But those to the front, once in the water, spread to find room. Herein lay the peril of the drivers, and the dire necessity of keeping the herd pointed as long as possible. Such a feat seemed utterly futile to Brite.

  Across the backs and horns Brite espied Ben Chandler on the downstream side of the herd, close to the leaders, and oblivious or careless of danger. Bent on retrieving his fatal error, he had no fear. Soon Brite lost sight of Ben’s bloody, bandaged head in the flying yellow spray. Try as he might, he could not see the reckless driver again. San Sabe and Ackerman, both on the downriver side, slowly gave ground toward the rear of the herd, intending to fall in behind as soon as the end passed. Rolly Little, Holden, and Whittaker passed Brite in order, fire-eyed and gaunt with excitement.

  When next Brite cast his racing glance out ahead he was in time to see old Mossy-horns heave into deep water. He went clear under, to bob up like a duck and sail into the current. Like sheep the sharply pointed head of the herd piled in after him. Texas went off the bar far upstream, and Reddie still farther. As Brite gazed spellbound the wide rear of the herd, in crashing momentum, rolled past his position. It was time for him to join the drivers. He spurred ahead, and the mustang, excited and fiery, his blood up, would have gone anywhere. Brite had one last look out into the current, where a thousand wide-horned heads swept in a curve down the middle of the river. Then he leaped off the bank and into the water, just even with the upriver end of the herd. Thunder would not have done justice to the volume of sound. It was a strange, seething, hissing, bone-cracking roar. But that seemed to be diminishing as the cattle, hundreds after hundreds, took to the deeper water. Texas and then Reddie passed out of sight. The great herd curved abruptly. Next Ackerman disappeared round the corner, and then Holden. That left only Whittaker in sight and he was sweeping down. Behind the herd Brite espied Bender, who was nearest to him, and certainly a scared young man if Brite had ever seen one.