by Will Henry
By the time he and the drag riders slid their mounts through the last gap in Stark’s circle, the first of the Sioux were screaming their ponies across the Tongue. Seconds later some six or seven of them were still screaming—but not on their ponies. The Rolling Blocks spoke, and spoke again, and then spoke yet a third and a fourth and even a fifth time, before the last of the Sioux were well into the water.
With the addition of Waco’s, Chickasaw’s and Charley Stringer’s rifles, snatched on the bowlegged run from the tailgate of the lead wagon, there were twenty-five of the new Remingtons in breech-slamming action. With Ben’s and Nella’s sharp-barking little Henry carbines cracking over the deeper roar of the Rolling Blocks, it meant that a fire of nearly one hundred rounds per deafening half minute was getting into the charging warriors.
Red squaw had not yet groaned in smokestained cowhide tipi with the labor pains of the man-child who would make warrior enough to take that weight of lead and keep coming.
The Sioux split, right and left, up the west bank of the Tongue. They were gone back into the gathering dusk as swiftly, if less numerous by eight braves, as they had come out of it.
There were three crawlers among the eight downed Indians. The cursing cowboys killed them with riflefire from the wagons, not bothering to move in close and make it neat with handguns.
There was no time for such niceties. There had been three hundred of them and there might be three thousand more where that three hundred had come from. Miles were the idea right now. Herd miles, cowboyed and ropewhipped out of the milling cattle, as many of those miles and as far and long of them as might be driven under by first light.
In the last remaining twilight of the 25th of October, under the wagon-entrenched rifles of Stark and ten of the cowboys, Ben and the other fifteen riders put eight hundred cattle across the Tongue River in less than half an hour.
By six o’clock and full dark, the herd was moving due west for Montana and the southward sprawling forks of the Big Horn.
Jogging his black through the darkness a hundred feet ahead of the lead steers, Ben heard the light, quick chop of the approaching pony’s singlefoot, knew without looking back who it was riding up on him. He knew everything about her—even the sound of her calico mare’s sun-dancy way of going.
“Evenin’, girl,” he smiled. “How’s the patient?”
The patient was old Chickasaw, who had taken a smoothbore Sioux ball through the crown of the two things he held most dear in life: his mildewed beaver hat, his proudly long thatch of bristly gray hair.
“It’s the damn hat that’s fretting him,” laughed Nella. “He wouldn’t let me touch his ornery old head till I’d dug out the sewing kit and run a new band around that verminy hat. He’s all right. Just a tolerable clean skull scratch. We’ll never bury that old mossyback, but I’d purely admire to put that godawful hat about six foot under. Ughh!”
Ben eased back in the saddle, reached over and sought in the darkness for her hand. “Good to hear you laugh agin, Nella. I reckon it’s what keeps a man out in front of his cattle and squintin’ the trail beyond.”
She didn’t answer for a minute, then asked softly, “What do you see out there, Ben?”
“What you mean?”
“’Out there.’” she said, gesturing into the night. “In the beyond.”
“Meanin’ fer you and me?”
“For all of us, Ben. You, me, Clint, Stark, the whole mixup. What’s out there?”
Ben knew she wasn’t just talking. The way she asked it was too quiet, and of a sudden there wasn’t anymore laugh in it.
“You’re like Clint,” he said slowly. “Deeper’n me, with yer talk. Alius meanin’ suthin’ you ain’t sayin’, and figgerin’ I’m sharp enough to dig it out. I aint, Nella. You got to deal ’em face up fer me. Only mind I kin read is a cow’s. And mebbe sometimes a man’s—happen he’s thinkin’ me over with his hand hangin’ close to his gun. Women run me a blind trail and alius have.”
“I reckon they do, Ben,” she answered softly. “And men, too, when they don’t come at you with a gun.”
“Meanin’?”
“Stark, Ben.”
She was for sure like Clint, he thought. Trying to put him wise to Stark, thinking he couldn’t see for himself, slow minded or not.
“Nella,” he said at last, “Stark don’t fool me too much, not like it looks, I allow. It’s jest thet I see what he’s after, like I’ve told you. Fer him nothin’ counts but gittin’ this herd inter thet Gallatin Valley. He’ll likely do anythin’ he thinks he’s got to, to git ’em there. They ain’t cows to him, not like they are to me, nor even Clint. They’re money.” He paused, nodding soberly. “And thet’s all he’s after, girl. It ain’t like you and Clint think. He ain’t after me.”
“You missed me, Ben,” she said softly. “I wasn’t meanin’ he was after you—”
There was a limit to any man’s slowness. Ben’s pale eyes narrowed. “By God, Nella,” he growled hoarsely, “iffen he’s layed a goddam—”
“No, no Ben,” she interrupted quickly. “It’s not that, boy. He hasn’t touched me. His kind never comes at anything they want with their hands. Don’t you know that yet?”
“Mebbe,” said Ben darkly. “How’s he come at you?”
“Like he comes at everything,” she answered bitterly. “With money and like it was a business deal. And like he could afford to pay more than anybody better dare turn down.”
“Go on—”
“Ben, he’s offered me half of Montana, with Alder Gulch and Virginia City throwed in. And he means it, Ben!”
“He means what?” said Ben thickly.
“To marry me.”
She said it in a small voice, as if she knew it would hit him heavy—and she wanted to make it as light as possible. And as kind.
Stark was a rich man. He was going to be a lot richer. When he said half of Montana, he was only funning by probably five or six years of future. And he was a real man, too. Real in a way the likes of him and Clint could never be. Nathan Stark knew two things most men never learn till it’s way too late—what he wanted and how to get it. He was a big man and a damn tall one. Alongside him and his kind, Ben and Clint were children. Tough ones, maybe, and hard-grown, but still far too simple and small to stand up with such as Nathan Stark. He would stand alone, and still stand alone, long after Ben and Clint Allison were two Texas cowboys lost in the traildust of time and ten thousand other shadow riders from the Rio Grande.
And this was the man who had asked Nella Torneau to be his wife.
“What,” said Ben Allison, the heaviness of his thoughts weighting the question, “did you tell him?”
“I told him,” said Nella, the sudden caress in her low voice as soft as the closing touch of her slim hand on his arm, “that I wouldn’t trade all the gold in Alder Gulch, nor cows enough to fill ten Gallatin Valleys, for the little piece of Texas I already owned.”
“Texas?” said Ben uncertainly. “I allow I—”
“Six foot four of it, Ben,” she broke in softly. “Dustdirty and not a dollar in its dumb-slow pockets.”
Chapter Twenty
On the third night’s drive from the Tongue they crossed the Little Horn, or East Fork of the Big Horn. There was no trouble at the crossing. Early the fourth night they drove on. In the whole way there had been no sign of pursuit by the Sioux.
At twilight of the fifth day Clint rode in for supplies and a fresh horse. He had ridden the little sorrel into the ground, covering both sides of the Bozeman Road as far as the Big Horn and ten miles beyond. He had seen a few old pony tracks, a few sun-dried droppings, but no signal smoke, tipi-fire coals or other fresh sign that the Sioux had headed them. “If the bastards are after you,” he told Ben, “they’re trailin’ behind the herd, waitin’ on somebody or suthin’ I cain’t figger. I kin guarantee you they ain’t in front of you though.”
Reassured, Ben ordered the cattle rested that night, gave up the night trailing, ne
xt morning put the herd back on regulation day drives. Within six hours of sunup, he had company.
Chickasaw spotted them first, a small bunch briefly silhouetted on a butte four miles off and paralleling the herd to the south. Waco saw the next bunch, more of them this time, closer in, moving along a hogback ridge two miles north of the road. By nightfall a dozen bands had been seen numbering from ten to fifty braves and all riding the same way—their way.
They seemed in no hurry and to be keeping no particular watch on the mile-long line of the Texas longhorns. All the same they were heading west with the herd, passing it steadily on the way. That night Clint did not come in and Ben’s thoughts were anything but optimistic.
The next day was the same. And the next two following. More Indians and constantly more Indians drifted the buttes and hogbacks paralleling the roughening track of the Bozeman Road. None came closer than a cautious mile from the herd, all acted as though they didn’t notice it was there. But with nightcamp of the seventh day from the Little Horn and with the parent stream a short day’s drive ahead, Ben and his scowling cowboy crew estimated they had tallied no less than one thousand mounted Sioux in the past seventy-two hours—and not an old man, squaw or cradleboard papoose among them.
That night Clint rode in again.
“I didn’t come sooner,” he grinned, ” ’cause I reckoned you could see as good as me thet you was crawlin’ with Injun lice from brisket to b-hole.”
“What’re they up to, Clint?” said Ben bluntly.
Clint lost his grin. “Dunno, old salt. It’s what’s got me scratchin’. I laid up in some rocks fur side of the Big Horn all day yestidday, figgerin’ to catch ’em settin’ another squeeze like they tried on the Tongue.”
“No sech luck?”
“Not nohow. They kept right on goin’. Crossed over above and below the road and never come nigh it.”
“Whut you think?”
“Dunno rightly. One thing, sure. They got a taste of them Rollin’ Blocks back yonder and whut’s more, a good look at ’em. Thet fust scramble, below Reno, they didn’t know whut was hittin’ ’em. Now they do, brother.”
“Reckon thet’s why they ain’t aimin’ to try another river play,” grunted Ben.
“I reckon. My idee is thet they’ve got a better spot picked sum’ers yonder. I seen powerful rough country startin’ in beyond the river. Real mountain stuff with a bad, narrer trail in spots I figger, Ben. I’ll leave you know fer sure, nuther three, four days.”
“Them’s the Snow Mountains,” Ben told him. “Stark was tellin’ me about ’em. He knows this road if he don’t know nothin’ else. Says he allows he kin tell us where to look sharpest.”
“So? How’s thet?”
“You see two twin peaks loomin’ a shade north of west over back of that rough country?”
“Yeah, allow I did,” laughed Clint. “They put me in mind of thet blonde in the Black Nugget.”
“Figgers,” grinned Ben. “Stark says they call ’em the Squaw Tits.”
“They call ’em right.” Clint flashed back the grin. “They’re a real set of risin’ beauties.”
Ben went on, no grin now. “There’s a big medder footin’ ’em on this side. The road crosses it. She’s a fair deep dry-cut comin’ in off our side and a four-mile canyon goin’ out the other.”
“Bottled both ends?” frowned Clint.
“Bottled,” nodded Ben. “And no grass nor water to carry a drive around her, either side. Accordin’ to Stark we got to go through the son of uh bitch and accordin’ to my Injun blood the damn Sioux knows it.”
“Sounds real interestin’,” drawled Clint. “I’ll give ’er a looksee. Saleratus—!”
He turned toward the chuckwagon.
“You got thet grub sacked yet?”
Saleratus moved toward them, bulking black against the backing fire. He handed Clint the bulging floursack. The youngster took it, hefted it, laughed softly. “Fer Christ’ sake, Saleratus, I ain’t goin’ ter be gone the hull winter.”
“Ya never know,” grumped Saleratus. “Leastways you won’t die of hunger.”
“Sal,” said Clint, soberly putting his big hand on the dour cook’s grease-sweated shoulder, “alongside yer biscuits, Injun lead ain’t in it. A man kin live through two thousand mile of yer potomain poisonin’ ain’t no two-day ride of Sioux bellyache goin’ to cramp him none.”
He turned to go, stepping toward the sorrel mare which, a week rested and grass-fat again, he had asked the night wrangler to catch-up for him.
Then, for no reason at all, he did a strange thing. Something Ben couldn’t remember him ever having done before. He came back to Ben and held out his hand.
Ben took it, gripping it hard. He felt the sudden, cold sink in his belly as he did. Then Clint grinned awkwardly, pulled his hand away in quick embarrassment, swung up on the little mare and was gone.
They crossed the Big Horn, turning northwest for the Yellowstone, still driving by day, corraling and picket riding by night. They crossed Pryor’s Fork of the Yellowstone on the 7th, Clark’s Fork on the 15th. Ahead now, the twin granite Squaws’ thrust up beyond the horizon. Ben scowled and thought of Clint, and counted the days he had been gone.
For the following five days he drove the men and the herd mercilessly. But with dusk of the 21st, and the cattle bedded outside the throat of the hill-choked entrance of the road’s channel into Snow Mountain Meadow, he waited by the fire in vain and long past midnight for the sound of pony hoofs from the west.
At two o’clock, the old moon cradled low and lopsided between the ragged peaks, Ben stood up. Clint had been gone a day short of three weeks. The Indian part of Ben’s mind knew what that meant. But the other part wouldn’t believe it.
A white man had to see—and be shown.
And somebody had to ride point.
He left the note, scrawled with the stub of his tally pencil on the back of an Arbuckle’s bag, pinned to the tailgate of the chuckwagon where Saleratus couldn’t miss it when he rolled out at 4:00 A.M. The note wasn’t any longer than the pencil—“Gone to look for Clint”—and was unsigned.
The late moon hung its dying lantern over the wagon ruts of the Bozeman, giving a man all the light he needed to keep the black on a trail-gait lope. By five o’clock the gelding was beginning to falter and want to quit, and the clouds of the coming day to pinken-up along their lowering underbellies to the east behind him. He let the horse down into a shuffle walk the last mile of the road into the meadow, knowing he would be wise to save some of him for daylight.
Five minutes later he was breaking into the meadow, free of the high hills guarding the road into it, and seeing across its five-mile flats the twin upthrust of the towering Squaws.
In the early light and quiet of the windstill morning, Snow Mountain Meadow lay before him, one of those high, lush, hidden pockets of mountain loveliness which only a traildriver with two thousand miles of rock and sand and bone-dry dust behind him could appreciate to its creek laced, thick grassed fullest. In all its vast, empty amphitheatre, only the clean rush and bubble of the creeks and the nodding wave of the tall mountain hay gave movement to its placid breast.
But above that peaceful floor, high above it, wheeling and circling away from its eerie high on the shoulder of the southern Squaw, spiraling swiftly down toward a creekside copse of alder and mountain laurel in midmeadow, something else was moving.
Ben saw the vulture launch its flight in the same moment the black gelding brought him free of the eastern hills. He followed its long glide, waited a moment longer to check its terminal circle over the midmeadow trees.
Letting the gelding take his own gait toward the grove, he angrily fought back the first thought that rode up in him. Damn his Comanche mind anyhow. It could be anything: an old bear kill, an abandoned, starved wagon mule, a dead Indian campdog, any one of a dozen things other than what a man’s Indian blood was hammering at him.
Slowing the black as the road entered the ti
mber, he nodded with the last relieving thought. One thing was certain, anyway. It wasn’t a fresh kill. That buzzard knew where he was going. He had been there before.
The last thought was the right one. It was not a fresh kill.
Clint had been dead a week.
He saw him as the road bent sharply past a thick stand of laurel to veer across the creek. They had driven an eight-foot sapling into the soft earth, squarely in the center of the wagon ruts. Across the main pole they had lashed a four-foot crossarm. From this, Clint’s gaunt body hung in final, grotesque rest.
Ben halted the black, his pale eyes automatically detailing the rest of it.
They had not mutilated him, at least not what a man could see of him. Beyond him stood his sorrel mare, rib-sunken and staring eyed but alive, and picketed with a length of Sioux horsehair rope. Where the starving pony stood, the grass had been eaten to the bare earth, and beyond the range of the picket rope a man could see where the Sioux had cut further armfuls of the rich meadow hay with their hunting knives. Then, while the meaning of that was coming to him, Ben saw the mound of empty Colt cartridges piled carefully at Clint’s feet, and the neat row of the five buckskin “war-bags” circling the shells.
With that, a man almost knew, was legging off his horse and going forward to make last and final sure.
That last thing had been the first to strike him when he broke around the bend. A man had left it until last simply because he had thought he didn’t have to look under it to know what wasn’t there.
Resting on the sagging shoulders of the dead Texas youth, covering his head, leering vacantly at you with its empty eye sockets, was a bonewhite buffalo skull—the exact counterpart of the one found east of Timpas Creek those long months gone.
