The Palo Duro Trail

by Ralph Compton

  There were other, smaller bunches of cattle packed together, their rumps to the wind and the slashing, needling rain, silent wraiths, still shivering from the cold and beaten into submission by the recent hail.

  Dag saw the fire then, reflecting off a rock wall that was part of an outcropping risen up from the harsh land centuries ago. Then the wagon, part of it lit by a storm lantern flickering an orange light, swaying back and forth as if someone were signaling a passing train.

  Jo was holding the storm lantern, while her father was wrestling with a wheel, trying to put in a new wooden spoke, his dark hulk hunched over the sawhorses, a small maul in his hand.

  Jo was wearing overalls and a yellow slicker that glistened like wet butter in the lantern light.

  Flagg came up on foot, away from the fire. “Dag,” he said.

  “Jubal, take this little calf, will you? Put him by the fire. He’s shiverin’ like a dog shittin’ peach seeds.”

  Dag lifted his sougan and Flagg reached for the calf, lifted it tenderly out of the crotch of the saddle.

  “Hey there, little feller,” Flagg said. “We’ll get you warm right quick.”

  Dag stepped out of the saddle, tied Firefly to the front of the wagon, behind the wet and disconsolate mules still hooked to it like beaten dogs to a stone sledge too heavy to pull.

  “Fingers, can I help?” Dag asked when he walked around to the other side of the wagon. “Jo?”

  “I’m fine,” Jo said.

  “You can tilt this wheel a mite,” Fingers said. “I ‘bout got it, I think.”

  Dag grabbed one side of the ironclad wheel and tilted it upward. Fingers slid one end of the wheel into a hole in the hub. The wood groaned as he pushed it in, then made a small snapping sound as it slid in and snugged up.

  “Set the wheel down, Dag,” Fingers said. “Upright. I just want to tap the rim some to make sure she’s snug.”

  Dag set the wheel down, slid his hands to the sides. Fingers took the hand maul and tapped on the upper rim.

  “Snug as a bug,” he said.

  Together, Dag and Fingers rolled the wheel over to the wagon. The rear end was jacked up, the bed resting on a boulder. They slid the wheel onto the axle and Fingers tapped in the peg that kept the wheel on, and slipped the thong over a flange on the wheel hub, so that if it ever slipped out, it would not be lost.

  Jo let the lantern down, then shifted it to her other hand and rubbed the arm that had carried its weight.

  “Should I put out the lantern, Daddy?” Jo asked.

  “Naw, not yet. Hang it up on that hook underneath the bed.”

  “What happened?” Dag asked.

  “Wagon hit a big hole and we dropped a foot or so and hit a big old rock. Splintered one spoke.” He reached down and picked up the broken spoke to show it to Dag. “We was lucky, Dag. The wagon pitched and I thought we were going to go over. Me’n Jo shifted our weight and righted it. Just in time.”

  Dag looked at Jo. She looked so forlorn with her rain-splashed face and hair streaming down around it like sodden black crepe. She was shivering.

  “Let’s go over by the fire, Jo,” Dag said. “I’m some cold too.”

  “Y-y-yes,” she stuttered. “I’m plumb froze through.” Then she laughed and Dag put an arm around her back and they walked to the blazing fire, Fingers following in their wake.

  The rock reflected the heat toward them and Jo soon stopped shivering. The little calf was standing there, bleating pitifully like a little lost lamb, with Flagg’s hand stroking its back.

  “Oh, Dag,” Jo said. “You saved the little tyke. He’s so cute.”

  “He’s a heifer,” Dag chided. “She’s cold and hungry.”

  “And I can’t feed her,” Jo said. “We need to find her mama.”

  They stood there as riders came in and those who were warm left to relieve them. Dag rubbed his hands to bring back the circulation. His fingers were wrinkled and bone white at the tips, like some unknown vegetable preserved in brine.

  The rain lessened, finally, but it was still cold.

  “Never saw a colder rain,” Flagg said, “nor so much of it all at once’t.”

  Dag nodded. He was thinking about the stampede. No one had mentioned it, as if bringing it up just then would be taboo. But he knew Flagg was thinking about the scattered cattle as well.

  “Not all the cattle are scattered,” Dag said, after a few moments, turning his back to the fire. Someone—he didn’t know who—was putting more deadwood on it. “I passed Skip, who was with about a thousand head.”

  “Dag, there’s near three thousand more we’ve got to get back when we can see our hands in front of our faces. I wish this damned rain would stop.”

  “It will,” Dag said. “They won’t run any more tonight and we can start roundup in the morning when the sun comes up.”

  “Yeah, it’s going to be a damned mess,” Flagg said. “And we’ll likely lose or never find a few.”

  As if to emphasize Flagg’s dire prediction, a wolf howled from a long way off, its mournful cry so depressing, nobody by the fire even mentioned it. But they all shivered, not from the cold, but from the dread of what they might find in the morning. Jo huddled against Dag and he put an arm around her. She looked up at him in gratitude and smiled a weak smile, the rosebud of her lips faded to a pale bloodless remnant.

  He wanted her at that moment so badly, he could taste those lips that he dared not kiss.

  Chapter 25

  Haggard, sleep-deprived drovers and cowhands roamed the desolate countryside, rounding up strays, searching for lost cattle. They found some dead calves, disemboweled, half-eaten by wolves, scavenged by coyotes, and now fed upon by turkey buzzards drawn to the smell of death.

  Flagg told Dag that, near as he could tell, the stampeding cattle had not run more than three miles in a more or less straight line. However, there were cattle scattered all over the land on both sides of the old buffalo trail.

  “How long do you figure getting ’em all back will take?” Dag asked.

  “Two days ought to do it. But we won’t get ’em all back, Dag. My men have already had to shoot two steers with busted legs, and we’ve found at least five or six calves that didn’t make it. I’m just fearful that some of ’em might have wandered into the Canadian during the night. It’s runnin’ worse than that damned Mora.”

  “I know. I heard it roar all night. It’s too bad we had to cross there, where the Mora feeds into the Canadian, but we couldn’t drive around it. Anyways, I don’t know how far the Mora runs west.”

  “I don’t pay that crossing no nevermind now, Dag. We got across before it got too bad. We were lucky.”

  “Yeah.”

  When Hughes and the others brought up the cattle they had guarded during the night, Dag turned the calf he had saved into the herd. It soon found a mother, or its mother, and had suckled in the warmth of the morning sun, butting its head against the bag to squeeze as much milk as it could from her teats.

  Flagg sent the chuck wagon ahead and started the herd moving, what there was of it. He rode point and told the drovers to just bunch up the runaways they caught and then follow him. It was, he told them, going to be a long day, but he wanted every head brought in. “Even if you have to make a dozen gathers.”

  By late afternoon, the herd had swollen to almost its previous number. A couple of drovers told about cattle with broken legs that they’d had to shoot. Flagg told Chavez to get a couple of hands and give him a head count. The chuck wagon had not stopped for lunch, but hands picked up hardtack and beef jerky, and ate in the saddle as the main herd moved north and west, following the trail Dag had marked off for them the previous year.

  Over the next several days, following along the west bank of the Canadian River, the drive reached a small, nameless settlement, an Indian trading post, where most of the hands got shaves and haircuts, losing their ferocious mountain man looks, and a few got mildly drunk and suffered the consequences as the herd moved on.
Fingers was able to buy rice and beans and twenty pounds of coffee, which made him feel better. Jo braided her long dark hair into a single comely braid, and to Dag, she looked prettier than ever.

  It was hard work driving the herd over Raton Pass and into Colorado, but they finally reached Pueblo, marveling, as they drove north to Denver, at the towering Rocky Mountains, many of which were still capped with snow in a breathless display of majesty such as none but Dag had ever seen before. They watered the herd in Cherry Creek and picked up a crowd of onlookers when they drove through Denver. Several buyers approached Dag and Matlee in Denver, offering to pay twenty-five dollars a head if they would run a thousand head into the stockyards.

  Matlee wanted to sell his brand there and go back home, figuring that was enough profit for him.

  “Barry, we have an agreement,” Dag said. “You know if you pull out here, I’ll lose my deal in Cheyenne.”

  “My hands are plumb worn down to a nub-bin, Dag. You could maybe sell all of your stock here and still go back home and pay off your mortgage with Deuce.”

  “And break my word to Jim Bellaugh and the Rocky Mountain Cattleman’s Association. Nobody would ever trust me again.”

  “You sure ain’t thinkin’ to drive another herd up this way, Dag.”

  “I might.”

  “You’re plumb loco, son. This drive has been enough punishment for all of us, ‘specially you.”

  “A man’s word is a man’s word, Barry. I put a high price on mine.”

  “Damn it, Dag, so do I. But a man has to be on the lookout for opportunity and we got one here.”

  Flagg was listening to the argument and he never said a word until it was just about over.

  “Barry,” he said, “it might be none of my business, but you got a good long life ahead of you. If you sell out your partner, the deed will foller you all your life.”

  Dag looked at Flagg in admiration. “Thanks for backin’ me up, Jubal,” he said.

  “I ain’t doin’ it for you, Dag, but for Barry here. He’s thinkin’ of makin’ a big mistake.”

  “Gangin’ up on me, are you? Well, I’ve a good mind to sell my seven hundred head and ride on back.”

  “And what are you going to do with the money, Barry?” Dag asked. “Buy more land? Buy more stock? And if you do either, how will that help? Ain’t a rancher in Texas would help you fix a broken pump or a windmill. Ain’t a drover who will work for you. Ain’t a buyer will buy from you. You’ll wind up eatin’ dirt and that’s for damned sure.”

  “All right, boys,” Matlee said, finally, “you win. I’ll keep my end of the agreement. We go on to Cheyenne. I just hope the offer with Bellaugh still stands.”

  And that was just what Dag was thinking when they left Denver and its temptations. But all the drovers had gotten some rest and some of them had gotten properly drunk, and some had played with the glitter gals and lost money at cards in the saloons and gambling dens on Larimer Street.

  From Denver, they journeyed north along the South Platte, laying over a while at Fort Collins, then on to the old Cheyenne Trail. The cattle had fattened on the drive and the calves born along the way—those that survived the weather, floods, and storms and that weren’t cooked up by Fingers—had good legs under them and seemed to be thriving.

  A number of stray curs followed the herd out of Denver. Jimmy Gough and Little Jake had the task of shooing them away, but they didn’t see the last of the dogs until they were almost where the Cache de la Poudre River emptied into the South Platte at La Porte.

  They entered the Sweetwater Valley and bedded the herd down just outside Cheyenne. Dag, Matlee, and Flagg rode into town and checked into the Becker Hotel, where Dag arranged for a man to ride out to the 3 Bar 8 Ranch and tell Bellaugh that he was there with the herd. Word had already spread, however, and many of the townspeople, curious, rode out to look at the herd and meet the cowboys who had driven the animals all the way up from Texas. They all marveled at the size of the herd and the quality of the animals. They met the drovers and cowhands and asked a lot of questions. Some of them showed their hospitality by extending invitations to supper or to church.

  James Bellaugh was a tall, rangy man with a small handlebar mustache. He found the trio from Texas in the dining room. By then, Dag, Jubal, and Barry had bathed, shaved, and changed clothes. They looked somewhat presentable for men who had driven a large herd of cattle more than a thousand miles.

  Bellaugh smiled and shook their hands. “I’ve seen the herd, Mr. Dagstaff,” Bellaugh said. “I’ve got a man grading them and making the tally even as we speak.”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Bellaugh,” Dag said. “Does your offer depend on the grade, then?”

  “Not particularly. But I want to know what I’m buying.”

  “Are you going to raise the cattle yourself or resell them?”

  Bellaugh lifted a hand to summon a waiter whose eye he had caught. “First, a little whiskey,” Bellaugh said, “and then we’ll talk business.”

  Bellaugh ordered a whiskey from the waiter and then turned back to the men at the table.

  “How many head did you arrive with, Mr. Dagstaff?”

  “Purt near four thousand steers and cows. Some calves.”

  “I contracted for less than that.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Depending on the tally, I’ll take them all. You throw in the calves. I’ll use those for breeding stock, maybe.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Forty dollars a head,” Bellaugh said. He took a sip of his whiskey.

  “Forty-five,” Dag said. “That was the price we agreed on.”

  “For prime stock, yes.”

  “Far as I’m concerned, the whole herd is prime stock.”

  “Forty-five, then.” Bellaugh extended his arm across the table and the two men shook hands.

  The waiter brought plates of food for Dag, Matlee, and Flagg. The three men tucked into the food. Dag heard something crinkle. He looked up and Bellaugh was holding an envelope in his hand.

  “Almost forgot,” he said. “This came for you yesterday, Mr. Dagstaff.”

  Dag reared back in surprise. “For me?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s addressed to you in care of me.”

  “Yeah, I left your address with my wife before I left.”

  Bellaugh handed the letter across the table.

  Dag looked at the return address. “It ain’t from my wife,” he said, his voice heavy with dread.

  “Open it, Dag,” Flagg said. “Might be good news. Wasn’t your woman expectin’ a baby?”

  “It’s way too soon, Jubal.”

  Dag looked at the name on the return address. It was from Carmelita Delgado, the woman who was watching after Laura. He opened the envelope. The letter from Carmelita was in Spanish, but he knew the language.

  Muy estimado Felix, read the formal greeting.

  Then he read the first line and his heart squeezed tight in his chest.

  Quanto lamento lo que ha pasado, the letter began. “I’m so sorry for what has happened.”

  Tears began to flow down Dag’s cheeks as he read the rest of it. He read it again and more tears flowed from his eyes. He looked up at Flagg and Matlee.

  “Laura’s—Laura’s dead,” he said. “She had a miscarriage and lost the baby. They—they couldn’t stop the bleeding.”

  “I’m sorry, Dag,” Flagg said softly.

  “My sympathies, Dag,” Matlee said. “I’m awful sorry.”

  “Mr. Dagstaff,” Bellaugh said, “please accept my condolences and my deepest sympathies.”

  But Dag didn’t hear them. He thought of Laura dying all alone, but he could not yet believe it. He could see her face now, shining, glowing with the life that had been inside her. He heard her voice and her laughter and he smelled her fragrance, felt the softness of her hair when she brushed her face against his cheek.

  He took a deep breath and wiped the tears from his face.

  Then, he just sat th
ere, staring back through time, thinking of the day he had left Laura to ride north with the herd. He thought of their last kiss and her arms around him, squeezing him, her breasts burning into his chest.

  “I ain’t hungry no more,” he said, numbly. “I think I’ll have one of those whiskies.”

  But the liquor didn’t take away any of the pain; it only deepened his sadness.

  Chapter 26

  Dag felt strange riding back home with the Colorado winter breathing down their necks, the Rockies mantled in snow, the pale yellow sun weakening with each day. They all rode together with Fingers, Jo, and the chuck wagon as the centerpiece to their ragged formation. Fred Reilly, who rode for Barry Matlee, was in jail back in Cheyenne. He had been in a fight in a card game with a bunch of slickers, lost his temper, and shot the dealer at point-blank range.

  Some hands were nursing sore jaws and busted heads, but they had memories to take back with them to Texas.

  Jo had bought two pretty dresses in Cheyenne, and she grew more beautiful, Dag thought, with each day’s passing.

  They stopped over in Pueblo, homesick for Mexican food, then continued on over Raton Pass and into New Mexico, with the larder in the chuck wagon full. Some of them had taken scatterguns up on the Colorado prairie and shot game: doves streaking south for Mexico, prairie chickens, and top-knotted quail such as none he had seen before.

  They rode through the gathering chill of New Mexico, followed the Canadian, crossed the Mora, and felt butterflies in their stomachs as they neared Texas. They knew they were making better time than they had on the drive up to Cheyenne. Jimmy had sold off some of the horses in Cheyenne, so the remuda had shrunk considerably. All of the hands, including Dag, switched horses daily, so that they always had a fresh mount each morning.

  Flagg had been offered a job by James Bellaugh, but he had turned the offer down. Bellaugh had warned them of thieves who might attack them and rob them when they left Cheyenne, and while they had seen a few suspicious riders, none had attacked them. There was safety in numbers, Matlee kept saying, which showed Dag just how scared he was of being robbed.