Hard Texas Trail

by Matt Chisholm

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is the size of it - we’re out on the prairie and far from home and I ain’t too sure where we’re at. We have to find the rest of the outfit, because they’re afoot.’

  She said: ‘I didn’t thank you.’

  He looked at the horizon. Suddenly he felt shy of her.

  ‘No call,’ he said.

  ‘You risked your life for me,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t have no choice,’ he said with a grin. ‘You threw yourself at me.’

  She grinned back at him.

  ‘I was never more glad I threw myself at a man.’

  Juan Mora, who had an instinct for location, said they were headed about right and they should sight the crew before noon. Clay hoped he was right. They just kept pounding on, scanning the endless plain around them for any sign of movement. The rain stopped altogether and, as noon neared, the sun broke through and cheered them all considerably. The horses started to steam and Clay stopped shaking with the cold.

  It was now that Juan yelled that he knew where they were. Clay didn’t know how he did it because these Kansas plains all looked alike to him, but about a half-hour later, they sighted something off to the north-east and a short while after that they saw a man dancing up and down waving frantically to them. Pretty soon they were with the crew and everybody went a little wild with relief.

  They all talked at once. The crew had thought, not unnaturally, that the large horse herd represented Indians approaching and had prepared themselves for a fight. When it came to them what all those horses meant, they realized that a fight might not be so far off. They gazed in amazement and awe at Sarah Bingham. Clay knew what was in their minds and he resented it. Sarah had been with the Indians and they all knew what Indians did to white women. The four of them were bushed, but he knew that there was no time to rest. They must find somewhere to hole up. But where could a man find good cover on these damned plains. He saw to it that Sarah was cared for. The boys hovered around her. They found her blankets and paulins. It seemed that she was no sooner in camp than she was asleep. Clay was relieved to see her out of circulation for a bit. It wasn’t going to be easy, having a strange woman in the outfit. They’d have to get her to a settlement and leave her. That didn’t sound too hopeful. They would have to pass through the Indian Nations into north Texas before they found a suitable place.

  He went and sat in the sun on the edge of the creek and tried to think. He reckoned that never in the history of the world had a fellow ever got himself in such a fix. The only thing going in his favor was the chance that the rain had washed out his tracks and the Indians wouldn’t be able to find him.

  But wouldn’t they return to the spot where they had originally lifted the horses? So he must run for it. But if he ran he would leave sign and they would follow it easily.

  Then, he told himself, he had the horses to bargain with. Indians didn’t like having men killed any more than white-men did. And they would want their horses back.

  His eyelids were drooping. His eyes shut and it was as if they were glued together. He forced them open. He was in charge here.

  He’d stay and rest up, he decided.

  Jody came to him. As usual he had a half-dozen scatter-brained ideas for what they should do.

  Clay told him: ‘I know what we’re goin’ to do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Stay put.’

  Jody said: ‘You’re crazy.’ Manning Oaks was standing by. He agreed with Jody. ‘The boy’s right. You’re plumb outa your head.’

  Clay felt the blood get into his eyes. He thought Manning had too much to say for himself.

  ‘Mannin’,’ he said, ‘you’re a mighty smart hoss. We all know that. But every time you open your mouth, the words come out. Any time now, I’m goin’ to stuff ‘em back in.’

  They glared at each other.

  Clay thought: This ain’t no good. I’m in charge. Pa wouldn’t quarrel with a man he was bossin’.

  Manning said: ‘Any time you wanta try.’

  Clay said: ‘Any time you don’t like the way I run things, you’re free to go. I pay your wages an’ you ride.’

  Manning stared at him a moment longer, then turned away.

  Clay set the guards, then got under a blanket and slept.

  It seemed his head had no sooner touched his saddle than somebody was shaking him.

  He wrenched himself out of a deep sleep and saw the bright blue sky above him. He knew he had closed his eyes for no more than an hour.

  Pepe Mora was leaning over him.

  ‘Riders coming, Clay,’ the Mexican boy said.

  Clay threw off his blanket and stood up, looking around. The girl was still asleep. A few yards away Manning Oaks and Juan Mora slept.

  ‘Yonder,’ Pepe said and pointed west.

  Meredith Quintin said: ‘Could be mustangs. ‘

  Clay fetched his glass and walked to the top of the hillock. It took him some time to find them. When he did, he didn’t doubt it was Indians.

  He walked back to the others and said: ‘Indians. ‘

  ‘Best wake the others,’ Charlie Quintin said and started for them.

  Clay said: ‘Leave ‘em lie. They need it.’

  He looked at the horse herd, scattered out on the grass. They would be impossible to hold if shooting started. He walked back to the creek and looked up and down it. His eye fell on the brush along its eastern bank. At once, he gave orders for the boys to cut stakes and rig up a rope corral using the brush as one side of it. It just might work. Then he gave orders that their own horses should be cut out and staked. After that, the Indian ponies were driven into the rope pen and a couple of riders hovered around them to keep them from breaking out. It was the best thing he could think of, but he still didn’t like it.

  The thing he didn’t like most was the fact that they held the girl. The Indians wouldn’t part easily with a captive. There was no telling that one of them didn’t own her. Maybe even a chief. Clay didn’t know much about Indians, but he reckoned that could be big trouble. Even more trouble than the horses.

  The noise made by the horses being corralled roused the sleepers. He saw the girl talking to Jody. Then she headed for Clay.

  She came straight to the point. There was no time for anything else.

  ‘They’re going to want me back,’ she said.

  ‘I reckon,’ he told her.

  ‘What will you do?’ Her big eyes were on his. ‘You have the lives of these men to consider.’

  ‘I know what they’d want,’ he said. ‘What I want, there ain’t a chance of you goin’ back.’

  ‘But there could be a fight and men could get killed. I was crazy to think I could get away. If I go now,’ she said, ‘I could stop them.’

  ‘There ain’t a thing that can stop them,’ he said. ‘We have their horses. But we ain’t finished yet. There’re a good few of us and we have guns.’ He didn’t tell her that they didn’t have enough ammunition for a long fight. He just said: ‘You keep outa sight. I don’t want them seein’ you. Hear?’

  She nodded and walked away.

  He walked to the top of the hillock and used the glasses again.

  They were close. Horribly close. The detail he could see startled him. He knew that he was ignorant of Indians, but he was amazed that there were so many of them. He reckoned they outnumbered his party by three to one. Why, he thought, he didn’t even know what tribe they belonged to. He stared along the ragged lines of them, let the glasses play on their painted faces, their fluttering feathers. He saw that even the horses were painted and befeathered. He wondered how many of them there would have been if he hadn’t lifted their main horse herd.

  He inspected their armaments and saw that though they mostly seemed to be armed with bows, clubs and with what looked like lances, several of them had rifles. They were moving at a walk now, coming slowly across the plain, unhesitatingly.

  Now the glass stopped on one who looked different from the rest, a
tall lank fellow wearing a skin cap. He looked like a white man. Clay had heard that some tribes like to keep a white man around.

  His hope rose. Maybe they too wanted to talk.

  He found that his mouth was dry and try as he might he couldn’t swallow properly.

  He walked down to the others and started getting them into position. He had every man on foot and in the best cover the slightly broken ground on the edge of the creek could provide. He placed two men on the west of the herd, one north and south and the others in the brush on the edge of the creek. The girl he couldn’t find. That worried him a little, but he had other things on his mind.

  He walked a little north along the creek and waited. He hoped nobody among the crew would be foolish enough to lose his nerve and start shooting.

  He turned and bellowed: ‘Any man starts shootin’ - I’ll have his hide.’

  The Indians were within a couple of hundred yards now.

  He shouted: ‘That’s far enough.’

  Raggedly they came to a halt.

  That somehow fed his confidence a little. He waited, almost holding his breath. The feathers fluttered, the ponies tossed their heads. There was a conference going on there.

  Five minutes must have passed, before a lone rider came out of the cluster of horsemen and came forward at a walk with his hand raised in the air. It looked like the one Clay had thought to be a white man.

  He came slowly to the far side of the creek and stopped. He kicked his feet from his heavy wooden stirrups and curled one leg at ease over the front of his saddle.

  ‘Wanta talk?’ he said.

  He sounded white.

  ‘Better’n shootin’,’ Clay said.

  ‘Mighty glad you see it that way,’ said the man. ‘Mind if I come across?’

  ‘Only you,’ Clay said. ‘Them Indians come any closer and we start shootin’ their horses.’

  ‘They won’t move,’ said the man.

  He walked his horse into the creek and walked it across. It came dripping up by Clay and the man slipped from the saddle.

  The first thing Clay noticed about him was that he smelled. His face was the color of a weathered walnut. It was all gnarled and twisted. The nose was long and misshapen. The eyes were watery and they didn’t stay on Clay for long. He could have been any age between thirty and sixty. His hair was long and brown, tied on the nape of his neck with a strip of rawhide. His hunting shirt was made of doeskin and Clay doubted if it had come off him since he first put it on several years back. It was shiny with grease and torn in several places. Once it had been fringed, but now most of the fringes were missing. There was an old Colt revolver thrust through an ancient crimson sash around his waist.

  He grinned and showed that he had lost a great many teeth.

  ‘Simon Clegg’s the name,’ he said. ‘I’m what you might call their tame white man.’

  His eyes flickered away from Clay.

  Clay looked past him at the Indians and saw they hadn’t moved.

  ‘I’m Clay Storm,’ he said.

  They shook. Clegg’s hand was hard and strong. Then the lank man sank to his hunkers and Clay followed suit. Clegg drew a battered pipe from his sash and stuck it in his mouth. When he had fired it in a leisurely fashion, he said: ‘My Indians is mad at you, boy. An’ can’t say I blame ‘em.’

  Clay said: ‘An’ I’m mad at them. An’ I can’t say I blame me either.’

  ‘You got their hosses and that sure has put ‘em to a mighty lot of shame.’

  ‘I just got back what was my own,’ Clay said. ‘Theirs come along too. ‘

  Clegg grinned. Then he shook with laughter.

  ‘Danged if’n I don’t like you, boy. You got spirit. But spirit ain’t enough to git you outa this tight.’

  It seemed an incongruously peaceful scene - the ponies in the rope corral, idly flicking their tails in the sun; the softly flowing waters of the creek; the Indians waiting there idly on the far side, looking as though they could never come rampaging forward with death in their hearts.

  ‘Well,’ Clay said, ‘we’re here to dicker. Start dickering, Mr. Clegg.’

  ‘First off,’ Clegg said, ‘they want their hosses.’

  ‘How do I know they’ll clear off when they have ‘em?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Is that enough, Mr. Clegg?’

  Clegg looked shocked.

  ‘Cross my heart, Mr. Storm. Why, I live by my word bein’ good.’

  ‘So, we give ‘em the horses and they ‘light out.’

  Clegg’s eyes flitted around.

  ‘Ain’t quite as simple as that,’ he said.

  ‘How simple is it?’

  ‘They want the girl.’

  ‘No,’ said Clay. ‘Not the girl.’

  Clegg leaned forward.

  ‘Use your head, Mr. Storm,’ he said. ‘Them’s dog-soldiers out there. Cheyenne dog-soldiers. They’re throat-cutters to a man. This here white girl, she belongs to Running Dog, their chief. He wants her back an’ come hella high water. He’s goin’ to have her.’

  Clay looked steadily at the other.

  ‘Mr. Clegg,’ he said, ‘you’re tryin’ to scare the pants off me. An’ maybe you’re doin’ just that. But it won’t do you no good. The girl stays.’

  ‘Now, lookee here, boy,’ Clegg said. ‘This girl, she ain’t nothin’ to you. The Indians, they treat her good. Running Dog, he thinks the world of her. Can’t see why, myself. She ain’t too good at skin scrapin’ an’ her cookin’s sure terrible. Running Dog ain’t leavin’ here without her.’

  ‘Then,’ said Clay firmly, ‘he ain’t leavin’ here a-tall.’

  Clegg opened his eyes wide.

  ‘You don’t mean you’re contemplatin’ fightin’ them Indians?’ he exclaimed.

  Clay set his jaw.

  ‘I’ll fight ‘em and I’ll kill every damn horse yonder,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t mean it.’

  Clegg looked helplessly around. He turned and stared at the Indians, then back at Clay.

  Finally, he said: ‘I don’t know rightly what to do about you, boy. I’m tryin’ to help you. Can’t you see I’m tryin’ to prevent them savages from takin’ your hair.’

  ‘They ain’t takin’ nobody’s hair,’ said Clay. ‘We have the crick between them an’ us. We have good cover. We have their horses. They have to cross that crick. They’ll lose a good many men when they try that. If they have the sand to try it.’

  ‘They have the sand,’ Clegg said. ‘Don’t you forget it for one minute, son. They have all the sand in the world.’

  ‘It’s only Running Dog wants the girl,’ Clay said. The rest’re only interested in the horses. Go tell ‘em, they can have the horses and see what Running Dog does then.’

  Clegg stood up. He looked doubtful. He’d been sent here to get the girl and the horses and this wasn’t going to do him much good with the Cheyenne.

  ‘It’s on your head,’ he said. He looked bitter.

  He forked his horse and crossed the creek. Jody called out from cover to ask what was going on. Clay told him to stay put and wait and see.

  Clay stood wondering if Clegg believed that he would fight and kill the horses. He wondered if he would himself. Maybe Clegg thought he was just bluffing.

  He watched Clegg reach the Indians. They gathered around him and the pow-wow started.

  A long time seemed to pass. Clay started to sweat. He wondered what the girl was thinking, if she was scared. Of course, she was scared, he told himself. He was scared; every man there was scared.

  It seemed an age before he saw Clegg turn his horse and coming riding back. He stopped his horse on the far side of the creek.

  ‘All right,’ he called, ‘they agreed. Give ‘em the hosses.’

  ‘Will they go then?’ Clay demanded.

  ‘Ain’t as simple as that,’ Clegg said.

  ‘What more do they want?’

  ‘The braves is satisfied with the hosses,’ Clegg s
aid. ‘It’s Running Dog. You shamed him, takin’ the girl. He reckons he can’t hold up his head with you havin’ the girl.’

  ‘He don’t git the girl,’ Clay said.

  ‘Then you fight him for her.’

  For a moment, Clay couldn’t believe his ears. Then it sank in. At first his mind rejected the idea violently. He’d refuse to part with the horses. Then the other Indians would force Running Dog to change his mind.

  ‘Then they don’t git their horses,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a fight,’ Clegg said. ‘They ain’t feelin’ too patient, boy. I talk ‘em outa fightin’. It just wants a bit of sass from you to make ‘em come in here after your hair. Think on it. A lotta men’re goin’ to die. Maybe even the girl.’

  Clay cursed Clegg to himself, knowing the man was right. But he hesitated. He was no fighting man. Fighting was most likely Running Dog’s very life. White men could despise Indians, they could sneer at them for cowards, but in that moment, Clay knew different. He had no experience with Indians - just the same, he knew that he would be facing a skilled killer. He swallowed with difficulty. Everything could hang on what he decided, the lives of his men, the girl.

  ‘If I fight,’ he said. ‘I can’t be sure the Indians’ll clear out.’

  ‘I guarantee it,’ Clegg said. ‘Ole Clegg never lied.’

  Clay didn’t believe that. He stood teetering on the edge of decision. He knew he was just plain scared. He thought of his brothers. He owed it to Pa and Ma to keep them alive.

  ‘What do we fight with?’ he demanded and his voice shook.

  ‘Anythin’ but guns,’ Clegg said.

  There was cold heavy clay in the boy’s stomach.

  ‘All right,’ Clay said. ‘I’ll do it.’

  He walked away and yelled: ‘Git the Indians’ horses across the crick.’

  Jody came out of cover.

  ‘They goin’ to clear off?’ he demanded.

  ‘Sure,’ said Clay. ‘You drive the horses over, then you hug cover. Nobody shows themselves, hear?’

  They all started shouting questions. Anxiety sounded in their voices. Clay walked away from them, watched them choose the horses from the rope-corral. Manning Oaks ran toward him.