by John Benteen
“There’s no reason for us to. I don’t want to fight you.”
“There’s a lot of reason. You don’t understand, Kilpatrick. I have to go up against the best there is. Know I’m better.”
Kilpatrick shook his head. “You’re hopeless. Damn it, you and that gunfighter’s itch. Didn’t you see what it got Trask? Didn’t you see what it got Knowles? You’ve got something else to hang on to, now, Rio — the badge.”
“I aim to hang on to it. But that still doesn’t keep me from looking forward to the time when you step out of line and I have to come after you.” Then Rio lowered the shotgun. “For now, though, there’s no cause. Put your people in there and you get out of town.”
“I aim to. I’ve been away from the herd too long as it is. You won’t be siding with Jordan — ?”
“I won’t be siding with anybody. Except the law.” The boy turned away.
“All right,” Kilpatrick said. “Do that. But watch your back while you’re about it.”
The boy did not answer. He went off down the street, ramrod straight, entered the Marshal’s office, closed the door behind himself. By Kilpatrick, Cord Lightner said quietly, “That kid has purely got hell in his holsters, ain’t he?”
“He don’t know what he wants,” Boyd said. “But maybe if he can hang on to that badge a while longer, he’ll find out. Maybe toting it around will make him grow up.”
“If he lives,” Cord said.
“Yeah,” Boyd said. “If he lives. All right, let’s get Mr. Gault inside.”
Watley helped them. “I watched that through the window, Kilpatrick,” the doctor said. “It was a good job. Knowles has needed that kind of treatment for a long time. Bring Ike in here.” He led the way into the hospital.
It was a long, low room of rough lumber, contained four beds, all vacant. “Put him in that one. It’s made to take a restraining sheet.”
“What’s a restraining sheet?” Boyd asked as Fleming lowered the still snoring Gault to the mattress.
“This.” From a drawer, Watley took a heavy piece of canvas with grommets down both sides. While Stewart removed her father’s shoes, he latched one edge of the canvas to locks along the rail of the bed. Then he pulled it taut over Gault’s body, locked the other side the same way, so that Gault was pinned. “He’s gonna wake up fightin’,” Watley said. “He always does. Then, when he gets dry, he’ll probably have delirium tremens, think all the devils from hell are here to get him.” His eyes went to Stewart. “That might be a bad time for you, girl.”
“It can’t be any worse than some I’ve already had with him.”
“No. Well, maybe it’ll be easier for him if you’re here beside him right along.”
“I intend to be.”
Boyd turned to Cord Lightner and the others. His instructions were terse, explicit. As far as they were concerned, the hospital was a fort. They were to remain within — Watley had plenty of food and water. The whole crew of them on guard around the clock, they were to protect Gault and Stewart with their lives. “This is for the herd,” he finished, knowing that was sufficient. Like himself, they had that philosophy bred in their bones: if you hired on to ride for a brand, you hired on to die for it.
“We’ll keep a good watch. It’ll take a tougher bunch than Jordan’s come up with yet to smoke us out, and we brought plenty of ammo with us. Don’t worry about us; you get on back to the herd. That’s what counts.”
“Yeah,” Boyd said. He turned to Stewart. “Honey ...”
Regardless of the other men, she came into his arms. “Boyd, watch yourself...”
He kissed her. “Will do.” Then he turned to Wilkie Murray and Tep Chance. “All right, you two ride out with me, guns up and ready. You watch my back, I’ll watch yours.” He released Stewart. “I’ll see all of you later.” Then he went out, and, with his riders, mounted up. As they drummed down the street, the lights had come on. Armed men watched them from the sidewalks. But nobody made a hostile move; for the moment, it seemed, even Jordan’s appetite for combat was gone.
And, an hour later, without incident, they reached the campfire.
~*~
“Now let me see if I got this all straight,” Panhandle said, pushing back his hat and scratching his head. “You got to sober up this Gault feller. If you can git him off the booze, he can make arrangements to buy the herd for a better price than you can git anywhere else. And this feller Jordan don’t want you to do that. He wants the herd hisself, without competition, at his own price.”
“He’ll never have it, under any circumstances,” Boyd said, spooning up beans, eating hungrily. “He knows that now. Even if I have to sell it in Dodge or drive it back to Texas and drown ’em all in the Red River. But there’ll be others up behind us later on, and — ”
“And if you’ve broke his lock at the board, he won’t have a chance to clean up on them like he tried to on us.”
“That’s the size of it. On top of which, it’s personal between us now—me and him.”
“Yeah,” Panhandle said, and he grinned. “The boys told me that was a mighty pretty young lady you was with. It’s easy for things to get personal when there’s a girl that looks like that mixed up in it.” He turned, stared thoughtfully outside the circle of firelight toward the bed ground. “All the same, it looks tricky to me. Plumb tricky. Six riders in town guardin’ Gault, that leaves us powerful shorthanded out here. What if we was to have a run? Fourteen men, if you count me in, ain’t much to stop four thousand longhorns when they git their tails in the air and hell in their necks.”
“We’d better not have a run.” Boyd cleaned his plate, got up, put it in the wreck pan at the tailgate of the wagon. “Every man’s gonna have to work a double shift to make sure we don’t.” He went to his saddled night horse, a short-coupled, sure-footed blue dun. “I’m going out and take my turn now.”
Panhandle made a sound of protest. “Boss, you’ve had a hell of a day.”
“I can rest after we sell the herd.” Boyd swung up. “Keep the coffee hot, Panhandle.” Then he rode into the darkness.
The vast mass of sleeping cattle made a huge blot on the prairie. With a cowman’s experienced eye, Boyd appraised them. They were fat, which meant they were lazy and calm. There was little restlessness, hardly the clack of a horn or a calf’s blat; that silence was reassuring. The weather was good, too, the sky cloudless, the wind soft, no hint of any storm that might rouse them. Under normal circumstances, the possibility of a stampede was remote.
These were not normal circumstances. The silhouette of a rider loomed up before Boyd; the man had halted to light a cigarette. Boyd recognized the outline of the tall hat, the youthful profile. “Tep?”
Tep Chance turned. “Hi, Boss.”
“Everything quiet?”
“Like a grave.”
“Keep a sharp watch. You’ve seen that crowd we’re up against in town. Just make believe we’re in Indian country. Right now, it’s just as dangerous.”
Tep unhooked his leg from the saddle horn, around which he had been resting it. He loosened his Winchester in its saddle scabbard. “I’m keeping my ears up and sniffin’ the wind,” he said; he lifted rein, and rode on, singing in a low voice to warn the cattle he was coming, reassure them that riders were there.
Boyd completed his circuit of the herd, found all his men in place, some of them heavy-lidded and exhausted. In shifts, he sent them into the fire to tank up on black coffee. By the time midnight was past, he was beginning to feel the strain of the day himself. It was all he could do to stay alert, scan the darkness of the flats beyond the herd. But he dared not relax; not with Jordan undoubtedly planning a new move.
He tried to think what he would do if he were in Jordan’s place. Jordan wanted Gault. With only six Texans guarding the hospital, he could, if he chose to, take him eventually, and at the cost of many men. But with another fourteen trail hands ready to come to the rescue, it would be a risky move to tackle Watley’s place. Gunfire could
be heard from town — that much of it, anyhow; and, at the sound of such a battle, Boyd Kilpatrick would bring in reinforcements, hit Jordan from behind.
Unless the rest of the Two Rail riders could be tied up, drawn off by a diversion ... Then Jordan would have a free hand with Gault, could eliminate him, wipe out the threat of competition. But there was one way, and one way only in which Jordan could accomplish that — stampede the herd. The herd came first. If it ran, Boyd and his riders would have to go with it, abandon the men in town — and Gault — to their fate.
Boyd cursed softly, stubbed his cigarette out against his boot toe. Jordan had the edge, all right. Given a choice between men and cattle, a trail boss had to choose the cattle every time, and Jordan would know that as well as anybody. Yes, damn it, he had the whip hand — and it was only a matter of when he would strike.
Everything within Boyd cried out that he must beat Jordan to the punch. Attack first, have a showdown with the man. Then he shook his head violently. No, he must be getting groggy with lack of sleep. Tough as his Texans were, there were not enough of them. He would have to leave half of his remaining men with the cattle; the six at Watley’s would be tied down; he could not take on the whole District of Gunsight with seven riders. Jordan would be on guard against such an attack and it wouldn’t have a chance.
Boyd rode to the fire. There he poured coffee, ate biscuits. The hot, strong Arbuckle had, when a man was tired, a better bite than any whiskey. Suddenly his head cleared; suddenly he knew exactly what he was going to do.
He stood up, grinning. If, please God, Jordan didn’t hit the herd tonight, if he gave Boyd just one hour of daylight tomorrow — why, then, Tully Jordan was in for a surprise.
Boyd Kilpatrick got his bedroll out of the wagon, spread it. Fully clad, he rolled up in his blankets, pillowed his head on his warbag. Then, like a baby, he slept for exactly two hours and, refreshed, arose again to inspect the herd.
Chapter Nine
The night passed uneventfully. When dawn came, Boyd went to work at once. Within an hour, the only preparation that he could make for what was likely to happen was finished. He kept a skeleton guard on the herd while the men slept.
Taking his turn himself at outpost, lying on a rise beyond the creek, with his Winchester cradled in his arm, watching the trail from town, he smoked one cigarette after the other and thought of Stewart. If this came out all right, if he didn’t go back to Texas a beaten man who had sold his herd at a loss and gotten a lot of men killed uselessly, then the future was going to be vastly different than, at the beginning of this drive, he had imagined it. He would be taking more than money back to the Pecos with him, and he passed the time by making plans, building air castles.
Then he was serious, staring toward Gunsight shimmering in the heat on the flats. A work engine blew a plume of smoke; its shrill, mournful hoot drifted through the stillness of high noon. He glanced back toward the herd, but the cattle didn’t even raise their heads at the sound. They had quickly become accustomed to it, maybe even imagined it was the bellow of some gigantic bull. They were getting fatter, lazier, every day.
Looking at the town, Boyd tried to imagine what was happening in the fort that Watley’s hospital had become. Ike Gault would have slept off yesterday’s binge by now. Strapped down, he would be in agony, hungover and begging for whiskey to mitigate his misery. It would be hard for Stewart to sit there and listen to her father whimper and beg, but she had enough iron in her, he was certain, to endure it. Maybe, if Ike was rational enough, she might even begin to discuss their plans with him.
The day dragged on. Boyd watched the railroad crews at work, thrusting the rails on past the town. Gunsight this year; next near another town. Before long, the rails would be thrusting down into Texas. In a few years, the drive would be cut in half, in a few more maybe it would not be necessary to drive at all. That was all right with Boyd. Americans would never give up eating beef. There would always be room for a cowman.
At twilight, Boyd rode back to the wagon. Panhandle was cooking a big supper. “Everything all right here?” Kilpatrick asked as be dismounted.
Panhandle grinned. “Fine as frog fur.” Then be jerked his head toward the herd. “Except the boys say Big Ugly ain’t exactly happy about what you did to him.”
“He’ll live through it,” Boyd said and reached for the coffee pot.
Night fell. The inexorable routine of holding the herd went on. Boyd slept through the early hours, roused himself just before midnight.
Now, he thought, the danger period began.
He mounted the grulla, rode out to check the herd, inspect, too, the outlying guards.
It was still warm, pleasant, but a haze of clouds veiled the moon, the prairie was one vast pool of darkness, the herd an even darker blot upon its gently rolling surface. Boyd rode tensely, his rifle across his saddle bow, his eyes straining to pierce the impenetrable.
The guards were all in place. Sleepy men droned songs to the cattle. Somewhere a whippoorwill called. Boyd turned the dun’s head toward the wagon.
Then all hell broke loose.
~*~
It came in a terrific explosion of gunfire from the darkness, a caterwauling chorus of yells. “Hiiahh! Hiiahh! Git outa here, cows! Hiiahh!” The muzzle flames of many weapons lanced the darkness; a longhorn bawled in agony as a bullet caught it.
Even as Boyd reined the dun around so hard it reared, a great rustling went through that immense herd, a kind of coarse whisper, the sound of thousands of cattle raising heads, then lurching to their feet. Boyd spurred his horse, rode hard toward that winking fireworks display of gunfire to the north, spread out across hundreds of yards. And as the dun stretched itself, he worked the lever of his carbine, sending shot after shot toward Jordan’s stampeders out there in the darkness.
Now the Two Rail men had recovered from their surprise, were fighting back. Boyd heard the thunder of hooves from the wagon, the yelling of his men as they rode toward the battle. His guards, beyond the herd, were returning fire, too; he saw the fingers of flame their rifles made.
Then the men from the wagon were sweeping up around him. Boyd shouted orders. “Hit ’em, boys! Give ’em hell!”
“Boss!” Tep Chance bellowed in his ear. “Boss, the herd’s about to run!”
“Goddammit, let ’em run!” Boyd bawled. “Go after those gunnies out there!”
“What?” Even above the uproar, he heard the amazement in Chance’s voice. This was inconceivable — to let the cattle stampede without an effort to stop them.
“I said let ’em run! Now’s the time to fight!” Boyd spurred the dun harder, pumped the last bullet from the Winchester at a spurt of muzzle flame. Behind it, even over the gathering, sullen thunder of restless cattle, on the verge of stampede, he heard a scream of agony and his lips curled in a thin smile of satisfaction. “Come on!” he shouted, sheathed the rifle, pulled his Colt and rode hell-bent into battle.
As he did so, the very prairie seemed to shake, tremble. That sullen sound, at first muted, gained volume. Now it was a terrific, monstrous pounding. Above it rose the bawling of the cattle, the clacking of horns. Like a great ocean wave, the herd went into motion, slowly at first, then picking up speed.
And, as it stampeded south, Boyd Kilpatrick and his men rode to the north, firing everything they had.
It was not what the stampeders had expected. They had bet on every Two Rail man riding south with the herd, in a determined drive to halt and mill it. The counter-attack took them by surprise. And now, in the darkness, it was point-blank combat, man against man, gun against gun.
As soon as the battle had started, Boyd had done a strange thing. Even as he’d opened fire, he’d whipped off his hat, thrown it away. If they’d obeyed orders, every other Two Rail man had done the same. Now, as a sombreroed rider loomed out of the darkness twenty feet away, Boyd aimed, fired without hesitation. Any man with a hat on was not a member of the Two Rail crew.
The slug caught the
man in the chest; Boyd heard his groan, saw him pitch backward over the rump of his horse. Another rider appeared in silhouette, crossing Boyd’s front, firing at something Boyd could not see. That rider, too, wore a hat, and Boyd tracked him with the gun muzzle, pulled the trigger. The skylined head disappeared as the man lurched forward over the horse’s neck.
Then it was a battle fought without any audible sound of guns. The gunfire was swallowed up in the titanic roar made by sixteen thousand pounding hooves. Boyd chose his targets, fired and fired again until his gun was empty, crammed in fresh bullets from his belt loop. He was just snapping shut the loading gate when a gun spouted flame close at hand. The dun squealed, went down. Boyd kicked his feet from stirrups, rolled clear, came up just in time to hear another bullet whine by his ear, catch a glimpse of the orange spurt of flame that had sent it on its way. He fired and fired again and fired once more, spreading his shots, center, left and right. One of them connected; a man made a gargling sound; the gun went off again, its flame pointed straight down. A riderless horse surged toward Boyd; he caught its trailing reins, was in the saddle without touching stirrup.
Now the thunder of the herd was diminishing. The animals, fresh, were running hard and fast, making distance. Another rider appeared close at hand; Boyd swung the gun, then held his fire. The man was hatless. “Boss!” It was Panhandle Smith, mounted and riding, for all the pain it cost his crippled leg. “Boss, the cowards have lost their guts for fighting!”
It was true. The gun flame was dying, drawing away. The stampeders were retreating, disappearing into the night. Panhandle plucked at Boyd’s sleeve. His voice was almost frantic. “Now! Now, can we go after the herd?”
“No!” Boyd bawled in his ear. “Help me round up the men. We’re riding into Gunsight!”
“But the cattle — ”
“You know what I told you! Let the cattle go!”
