by Lauran Paine
Miggs dropped his eyes, looking suddenly startled and uneasy. Without acknowledging that he’d heard Brian, he turned toward the cabin, saying roughly, “Come along, Frank,” and strode swiftly away.
Brian scowled faintly as he watched those two older men go along, then he shrugged and lay back, gazing solemnly up at the great vault of heaven.
Chapter Sixteen
They left Miggs’ meadow before sunup again, each man being particularly careful not to make any unnecessary noise. They brought it off, too, although McCoy hadn’t been sure they could, because, after slipping away the morning before, he thought it likely Beverly would be more alert the second time.
But evidently she was deep in dreams. They got completely across the meadow and into the trees without her stepping out of the cabin or even appearing in the doorway.
“So far, so good,” Frank told Red Morton.
The cowboy nodded without much interest. He didn’t know what Frank meant and had other things on his mind, anyway.
They went carefully, with Miggs leading and Fred Brian behind him. Where Miggs and McCoy had encountered the muley bull, they halted long enough for Jackson to make a forward reconnaissance afoot. He came back to say: “The herd’s another half mile on ahead. That bull must’ve struck out on his own last night.”
“Yeah,” assented Brian dourly. “Probably scented my critters and was heading for them when dark caught up with him.”
From behind Brian, McCoy spoke up: “Jack, Holt’ll have scouts out sure as the devil.”
This warning, while undoubtedly accurate enough, was not something Miggs had been unaware of for some time now. He nodded back at Frank, swung up, and reined southward, leading his companions away from the main part of Holt’s Durham herd.
After paralleling the rousing cattle for some twenty minutes, Miggs halted again. This time he drew forth his rifle as he dismounted, jerked his head for the others to do likewise, and motioned for silence.
Red Morton pushed up to whisper: “Jack, this time let Lex mind the stock.”
Miggs shrugged, beckoned them all up to him, planted his rifle butt down, and said: “Murphy, you stay with the horses. Whatever happens, don’t let ’em set us afoot. If you’ve got to clear out, ride one horse and run the others on ahead of you. When it’s safe, return to this same spot. Here’s where we’ll rendezvous. Understand?”
Lex Murphy nodded.
Miggs considered the others a moment before speaking again. “We’re in front of Holt’s herd,” he ultimately said. “If there’s much gunfire, they’ll likely stampede. Boys, watch out for that. If it happens, shinny up a danged tree, and never mind the splinters. There’s a lot of Durhams around us in here … if you get caught afoot underneath ’em in a stampede, the rest of us’ll need spoons to pick up what they leave of you.”
“If Holt guesses what we’re doing up in here,” put in Frank McCoy, “he’ll stampede the critters, and don’t you ever think otherwise.”
That point covered, Miggs now gestured right and left with his rifle barrel. “We go walking along northward now, but always keep the feller next to you in your sight. Don’t get lost or split up. In a fight among trees, you got to know where your friends are, otherwise the wrong fellers can get shot.”
Brian gradually scowled. “I thought last night you said we were going to push these cattle back westerly. Now you’re talking about a war with Holt’s crew.”
“It’s the same thing,” explained Miggs. “When we start walking westward, we’ll push the cattle along ahead of us. But unless I’ve got Denver Holt figured entirely wrong, it’s not going to take him long to figure out what’s happening. Then the fighting’ll start.”
“But couldn’t we push the cattle along a heap better on horseback, Jackson?”
Miggs’ reply, like its accompanying stare, was saturnine. “Yeah, we could,” he grunted. “And a man sitting six feet up in the air above a horse makes the pleasantest target you could ask for, too.”
Brian said no more. In fact, none of them said any more.
Miggs looked around. When Frank McCoy faintly nodded at him indicating they were ready to proceed, Miggs made another gesture left and right.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Remember … keep one another in sight.”
They fanned out as Lex Murphy led their horses back toward a particularly dense tree and brush thicket to the south. They hadn’t forged a hundred feet ahead before Frank, to the north, encountered a few cattle stirring up out of their beds. It was still gloomy in this part of the forest. For that matter, although there was gray and watery light out in the open places, the sun itself had not yet arisen.
Frank signaled to the others and walked on toward Holt’s Durhams. When the animals saw a man appear suddenly and noiselessly among them, on foot, they sprang up with frantic grunts and broke away westward.
Red Morton and Fred Brian came upon other bedded critters. So did Miggs farther south. As the four of them pushed ahead in their long skirmish line, Durham cattle sprang up and fled back westerly, first in isolated little advance pockets, then, after a while, in large numbers.
It was obvious to all of them that except for the fight yesterday afternoon, which had delayed Holt for several hours, his herd would have been as far east as Miggs’ meadow by this time. As it was, Holt and his men had evidently stopped the drive when it became too dark in the forest after sundown, left the critters to bed down wherever blackness overtook them, and had themselves left to camp far back, probably, Miggs thought, in open country where they could keep sharp watch roundabout.
By the time Miggs’ line had advanced a quarter mile, dust was beginning to thicken again in the air from all those retreating Durham cattle. There was considerable disturbed lowing but no frightened, alarm-sounding bawling as yet.
Miggs paused once to put his gaze northward for as long as it took to see and identify Fred, Red, and Frank. It was important the four of them did not get split up.
Satisfied then, he started onward once more, had progressed perhaps a hundred yards, when he was brought up short by the questioning nicker of a horse not far ahead and a little south of him. Others evidently had also heard that horse, for at once four men passed from sight around behind nearby big pine trees.
Miggs waited for the horse to repeat his call, but he never did. However, a man’s garrulous voice was lifted now, sounding annoyed and drowsy.
Miggs thought he knew what was happening; the numbers of those retreating cattle had possibly awakened one of Holt’s men out ahead in the meadow. Whoever that man was, he could by this time see hundreds of Durhams walking westward back out of the easterly forest, and perhaps he was as yet too sleepy to realize something had to have started those cattle withdrawing to the west. Possibly, because the animals were neither frightened nor in any big hurry, he conceivably thought it was just one of those spontaneous things cattle oftentimes do.
In any event, that cowboy roused himself to full wakefulness, blasted out a big curse, and called upon Holt’s other men to rise up, to get their horses, and turn the herd back. This man also called indignantly for someone Miggs thought was the night guard. The reason Miggs thought this was because that irate rider heaped imprecations upon someone on ahead as though that man should have seen what was happening first.
Fred Brian stepped forth from behind a tree, caught Miggs’ attention, and made a rushing motion, evidently to convey the meaning that he thought they should all rush out upon Holt’s camp before it was fully awake.
Miggs agreed with this, but made a motion back to Brian indicating that Fred should wait. Miggs then left his own tree, soundlessly slipping forward toward the forest’s edge to study the onward land.
He saw at once, though, that it was too late to rush Holt’s camp. In the midst of all those withdrawing cattle out upon yonder meadow, made vague by dust and disturbance, men were frantical
ly rigging out saddle horses, calling back and forth, and cursing at the Durhams streaming past.
There was still the element, if not entirely of surprise, then at least of diversion, though, for Holt and his men as yet were too fully occupied to pay attention to the possibility that this withdrawal of the cattle from the easterly forest was not spontaneous. But even as Miggs considered his next course of action, a dense throng of Durhams piled up around Holt’s frantic men out there, and someone—Miggs knew immediately who—blasted off a thunderous gunshot that panicked the closely packed Durhams.
Where that rifle bullet struck at the heels of the most easterly cattle, it flung sharp particles of gravelly soil against tender legs and flanks. This stinging, as well as that whipsawing fierce explosion, did what Frank McCoy had obviously meant for it to do. Cattle sprang ahead, struck other cattle, horns clicked, and bulging dark eyes swung aimlessly in wild panic. In a moment the rush was on. It transmitted itself to the other animals. Some were able to swing wide around that small pocket of yelling men in the dark, heaving sea of tawny brown hides. Others, running blind as stampeding cattle invariably do, swept in and over Holt’s camp, upsetting cooking pots, snagging bedroll blankets on wickedly tipped horns, and forcing Holt’s men to dive every which way for safety’s sake.
Miggs had not thought of stampeding the cattle, but now that it was done, he kneeled, took careful aim, and fired a thunderous shot of his own. Again, a bullet sent stinging gravel against those straining, rearmost animals.
Other guns opened up from the forest fringe, kicking dirt and stones to whizzing life behind the running cattle. Miggs reloaded and hung there on one knee, waiting to get in another shot. He was not able to do this, though, because of the dust and wild confusion upon the meadow.
Frank appeared beside him. He dropped down, put his lips up to Miggs’ ear, and called loudly over the yelling and bawling and earthshaking thunder of all those stampeding hoofs.
“Run in behind the cattle!” Frank said a little breathlessly. “If we stay close enough, they can’t see us, let alone get a shot at us. We can finish the lot of ’em.”
Miggs shook his head. That tumult out there was too loud to be shouted over now, so he simply raised one arm and pointed, showing McCoy that, trampled, taken by surprise, and reeling from their punishment or not, Denver Holt’s men were not losing their heads. They were doing precisely the only thing that could have saved them under those circumstances. They were running with the cattle, not against them. In this way they were beyond a doubt saving their lives, but, as far as Frank’s scheme was concerned, they were also, perhaps unknowingly, getting out of the meadow while dozens of orey-eyed cattle were between them and their attackers, making it impossible for anyone to down them with gunfire.
Frank watched, as did the others. Red and Fred Brian drifted down to join Frank and Jack Miggs. None of them had anything to say for as long as that panoply of wild confusion existed out across the meadow. Two of Holt’s men had managed to hang onto their terrified horses. Those two got dragged along, belly down, for five or six hundred feet, then one of the men let go. The second cowboy managed to hook both heels against an upthrust boulder, set himself, and stop his horse, although the abrupt force of his stopping the animal tumbled the rider end over end. That rider managed to get astride.
The watchers caught glimpses of him now and then when he passed from one dust cloud to another, wisely allowing the fleeing cattle to carry him and his horse along.
“Big gamble,” said Red Morton from lips that scarcely moved. “If them cattle knock that horse down, he’s a goner. They’ll cut him to ribbons under all them hoofs.”
No one commented. Every one of them knew exactly how true Morton’s observation was. Once, when that man passed out into view, Frank McCoy and Jackson Miggs exchanged a look; either one of them could have downed that man with their rifles. The range was much too great for carbines, but not for those long-barreled mountaineer rifles they carried.
“Frank?” called Miggs, and kept his grave gaze upon McCoy.
Frank looked far out, puckered his brow, narrowed his eyes, and pulled his mouth down at its outer corners. “You!” he called back. “I’m not up to it.”
Miggs smiled.
Frank, seeing that look, also smiled. He also ruefully wagged his head back and forth. “Don’t quite have the stomach for it,” he said. “You, Jack?”
Miggs shook his head, swung back, and watched that cowboy riding for his life amid all those heaving, shaggy brown bodies and clashing, wicked horns. He had no idea which of Holt’s men it was out there, and right then he didn’t care. Anyone who thought that fast, that clearly, to stay alive, deserved at least to survive the stampede.
Whatever that man got himself involved in afterward would be another affair entirely. But here and now, in Jackson Miggs’ view as well as in Frank McCoy’s thoughts, that man was entitled to victory, if he could achieve it, without being interfered with from behind when he could not possibly protect himself from any more peril than he was right then in the midst of.
Miggs, feeling eyes upon him, looked up and around. Both Morton and Fred Brian were looking at him and at his rifle, their expressions obvious. Miggs shrugged and looked away from them, returning his attention to where the fleeing man had finally made it safely in among the westerly growth of shielding trees.
Chapter Seventeen
Holt’s cattle had fled on into the forest without any slackening of their stride. In among them somewhere were Holt’s battered men, all but one of them afoot, and probably, as Frank observed to Jackson Miggs, if not injured, then at least badly knocked around.
“So let’s keep the advantage,” Frank said as Miggs stood up.
Miggs checked his rifle, then gazed over at Red Morton. “Go get Lex and fetch back the horses,” he said calmly. When Red darted away, Miggs swung toward McCoy. “Calm down. We’re going after them. Just simmer down, Frank.”
Murphy came back with Red mounted beside him. They handed down the reins to Brian, McCoy, and Miggs, and afterward trailed along behind Miggs, who led the lot of them on around the churned-up meadow where dust still hung in the morning air.
Beyond the meadow, to the west, they encountered some run-out, panting cattle. These beasts stared stupidly as the riders went past, making no move to run; they were exhausted and some of them were hurt where they’d struck head-on into trees or had been knocked down and trampled by the other critters.
Miggs swung his head, saying: “Guns out and ready.”
That was all he had to say. They were now in the vicinity where they could expect to encounter Denver Holt and his men. In fact, they were past two of Holt’s cowboys without even knowing it. And they didn’t know it until a man let off a cry of alarm behind them and to the north and fired at them.
Frank McCoy, farthest back, left his saddle in a soaring leap, hit down hard, and rolled like a ball to get behind a tree. The others also swung down on the fly. Miggs, anxiously looking back to see whether Frank had voluntarily left the saddle or had been shot out of it, saw Frank press in close to the tree, put aside his rifle, remove his floppy old hat, and solemnly poke a finger through a little round hole in the crown that had not been there before. Then Frank swore with feeling.
Miggs motioned for Red and Frank to circle around across from him. He slipped up where Fred Brian was stiffly standing, said, “Cover me from here,” and slipped away again, bound northward in the direction from which that single shot had come.
The smell of cattle, of dust, of strife and turmoil, was rank among the trees. Sounds of cattle floated back downcountry from where the Durhams were running themselves out through the westerly forest. Once, a man’s bull-bass roar sounded waveringly far ahead. Miggs recognized that voice and was gratified that Denver Holt was not still back here where at least two of his men were making a stand on foot.
Frank McCoy’s rifle roar
ed.
Miggs stepped behind a tree, looked back, saw the puff of dirty smoke from McCoy’s black-powder ammunition, swung, and sought for the target Frank had fired at. He did not find it, but he knew Frank well enough to know McCoy would not fire unless he had an enemy in his sights, so, until this was clarified, he remained motionless and hidden.
From off to the east, a carbine roared. Miggs placed that gun immediately. When another carbine shot exploded from this same gun, Miggs knew exactly where Red Morton was hiding, but he still could see nothing ahead.
He shunted from his tree to a more forward and distant pine, then sighted what the others had seen. Two men were down flat behind an ancient old deadfall pine. One would raise up, fire, drop down, and his companion would then repeat this maneuver. The second time those cowboys did that, Jack recognized them both; one was the curly-headed big man who had been tartly amused at being caught, flat-footed, that time when Miggs and McCoy had captured them on horseback. The other cowboy was Clark Forrester, Holt’s youngest and most hotheaded rider. Both were hatless, and Forrester’s shirt was torn, evidently the result of his bad moments in the midst of the stampede. Both men were firing with six-guns. Neither, it seemed, had Winchesters with them. If the fight was not entirely uneven before, in Miggs’ view, it certainly was now. Either he or Frank McCoy could stand up in full view of both those embattled cowboys with their long-barreled rifles, and pick Forrester and his companion off from beyond handgun range.
“Hold it!” Miggs called forward. “You two over there … behind that deadfall … quit shooting!”
Instead of compliance Miggs harvested a savage flurry of bullets that struck all around the tree that served as his shield. He waited out this storm, then called out again, only this time addressing his companions.
