The Omaha Trail

by Ralph Compton

  Concho be damned, he thought.

  And Throckmorton too.

  One day, he thought, his ranch would swallow up the bank and spit it out like so much tripe. Land was no good if you didn’t work it and make it pay. Cattle were the real wealth of the country, and this fine morning he felt very rich

  He plucked tobacco from his pouch and tucked the wad into his mouth. The juices quelled his hunger and when he spat, he felt like a king. He was doing what he was born to do.

  The drive was off to a great start. He wanted to let out a yell, but there was no reason to show his exuberance. He could feel it in his bones and in the horse he was riding.

  “You feel it, don’t you, Reno?” he said to his horse as he patted him on the withers.

  Reno snorted and tossed his head.

  And he stepped out like a champion when Dane gave him his head, lightened up on the reins.

  Soon the herd rode through wild clover, and the smell was sweet in Dane’s nostrils. Wildflowers poked their petals up in the midst of the green, and their scent mingled with the grasses.

  The scent made him slightly homesick and he thought about his father as he chewed the tobacco in his mouth.

  “Hold on, Pa,” he said to himself. “I’ll be back home before you know it.”

  But with each mile, he felt his home fade in the distance, as if all had been an illusion.

  And there were a thousand miles to go before he would see his father again.

  Chapter 21

  Concho’s anger crescendoed into a towering rage by the time he rejoined the rest of his men. Randy could almost feel the heat radiating from Concho when they rode up and saw the men standing next to their horses as the animals grazed.

  “That son of a bitch Kramer done dealt from the bottom of the deck,” Concho said to his men.

  “What you talkin’ about, Concho?” Skip Hewes asked.

  “Bastard broke up his herd. He ain’t with the one we scouted.”

  “You mean he’s makin’ two drives?” Logan asked.

  “Either that or he’s goin’ to be short on delivery in Omaha,” Concho said.

  He dismounted and started kicking grass and gouging grooves into the earth with the toes of his boots.

  His men all stared at him as if had gone plumb mad all of a sudden.

  “So, what are we goin’ to do, Concho?” Mitch asked. “Rustle two separate herds?”

  “Shut up, Mitch,” Concho snapped. “I got to think.”

  The men went silent. Randy slowly dismounted and stood apart from the others. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Concho in case he started swinging with his fists all balled up like a pair of hammers.

  No one spoke for several moments.

  Finally Concho squatted on the ground and picked up a stick that was lying nearby. He drew a circle in the dirt. The others watched him and then squatted around him.

  “Here’s what we got,” Concho said. “Likely, Kramer sent one herd on ahead. “Remember, Lem, I told you I didn’t trust that Mex we got them horses from?”

  “Yeah, I remember, Concho,” Lemuel said. “What’s that got to do with Kramer sending out only part of his herd?”

  “I think Montoya heard me or you or somebody say somethin’ before we left town. He probably hightailed it out to the Circle K and shot his mouth off. So Kramer says he’ll outfox me and send only part of his herd north.”

  Concho drew a line across his circle.

  “Here’s one herd,” he said. “Now, we might could rustle this bunch once it crosses into Kansas and hold ’em until Kramer shows up with the rest of his herd.”

  Lem scratched his head, knocking his hat off slightly to the side.

  “What good would that do?” he asked.

  “Kramer might think that first herd got slowed up and stalled and run his cattle right in with them what we cotched.”

  “So?” Mitch said.

  “So we kill two birds with one stone, maybe,” Concho said.

  “You count how many hands are with this herd?” Skip asked.

  “Not to a man, no,” Concho said. “But they got at least a dozen men.”

  “All with rifles and six-guns,” Will Davis said dryly.

  Concho looked at Davis with hard eyes. His lips clamped together. They flattened in a straight line in the center of his jaw.

  Then he let out a breath through tight lips. “Yeah, they got guns. And so do we. Question is, can we outsmart Paddy O’Riley and take him out before we have to draw down on the others? Might be we can cut off the head of that snake and just get them others to throw down their guns and do what we say.”

  “A whole lot of ifs and maybes in there, Concho,” Lyle Fisk said.

  Concho drew a line across the other line and then drew a small circle just above it.

  “Let’s say this is the herd O’Riley’s ramrodding,” he said, pointing the stick at the little circle. “We rustle that herd and scatter it out so it’s like a wall clear acrost where Kramer’s headin’. So he comes up, sees all the cattle spread out like they’re on their home range, and rides right in, drivin’ his herd right through the middle. We can pick him off and cut down any of his waddies that bring rifles to their shoulders. Likely, by the time Kramer figgers it all out, it’ll be too damned late.”

  “Might work,” Skip said. “We could use the cattle in that first herd for cover and shoot over their backs. Some of us could be on horseback and come runnin’ up when the shootin’ starts and cut the flankers and the man ridin’ drag before they could gather up all their wits.”

  Concho smiled at Skip.

  “You’re gettin’ the idea,” he said. “Anybody here got a better idea?”

  Lem spoke up. “Once you start shootin’, say when Kramer comes up, that first herd ain’t goin’ to sit still. They’ll spook sure as hell and stampede all over creation. Be hell roundin’ ’em all back up.”

  There was a silence. Concho rubbed fingers across his forehead. “You got a point, Lem. We might just stampede the herd with Kramer too.”

  “Which wouldn’t be a real bad thing,” Lyle said, a nervous quaver to his voice.

  “We might have to gun down a lot of them cowhands,” Skip said.

  “Hell, some of ’em’ll probably run back to home once they see Kramer go down,” Mitch said.

  “We can’t count on that,” Concho said.

  “What if we jumped them cowpokes at night when some of ’em are sleepin’ in their bedrolls?” Logan Heckler asked. “Might stampede the cattle, but it would sure cut down the number of guns we’d have to face.”

  “Don’t use no guns,” Mitch said. “Slip up on ’em when they’re asleep and slit their throats.” His mouth twisted in a savage leer.

  “Not a bad idea,” Lemuel said. “No noise. No guns. Bye-bye, cowhands.”

  Some of the men laughed.

  Mitch licked his lips and flashed another bloodthirsty grin.

  “It’s something to think about,” Concho said.

  “Why in hell do we have to wait until they drive that herd into Kansas?” Skip asked. “We’re a long way from Kansas and they might have other tricks up their sleeves besides splittin’ the herd in half.”

  Concho stood up, his anger boiling up again.

  “Throckmorton wants us out of Oklahoma, that’s why,” he said. “He don’t want no connection to him, so we got to rustle them cows up in Kansas.”

  “Well,” Skip said, “who’s to know? We could take ’em here, run ’em up to Kansas, and come back when we get the rest of Kramer’s herd.”

  Two or three of the men seemed to agree. They grunted and nodded.

  “We’ll do it Throckmorton’s way,” Concho said. “Besides, if we let O’Riley think he’s not goin’ to be jumped, he’ll let his guard down and when we do hit him, he’ll have a big surprise.”

  “You’re the boss,” Skip said.

  “And don’t you forget it, Skip,” Concho said. He walked to his horse.

  “W
here do we go now, Concho?” Lem asked.

  “We’ll ride up to the Verdigris. That’s a river O’Riley’s got to cross. We’ll count men there and see how he handles the ford. Won’t be too far after that before he’ll be in Kansas and we can jump him.”

  “Sounds like a fair plan,” Lem said.

  “It’ll give me more time to think. I didn’t expect Kramer to hold back part of his herd. What he done was put a big old kink in my rope and I don’t like it none.”

  “Seems to me we got a lot of possibilities. Might be easier dealin’ with one herd first, then waylay the next one when Kramer crosses the border.”

  “Yeah, Kramer might have done us a favor.”

  Randy had listened to all the talk and now he wondered just what Concho would do.

  Of one thing he was certain, and the thought sent shivers up his backbone.

  A lot of men were going to die.

  And some of them were men he knew.

  Suddenly he felt his knees turn to jelly as he stood up and started to walk to his horse.

  “You come with me, Randy boy,” Concho said.

  Randy winced.

  “I ain’t no boy,” he said.

  “Wait’ll you get some blood on your hands, kid. Then you can call yourself a man.”

  Randy closed his eyes for a second.

  “There will be blood on the trail, boy,” Concho said. “You can count on it.”

  Chapter 22

  Paddy sent Whit Hawkins west along the deep fork of the Canadian River and Bill Coombs east along the same river.

  “Find us a ford,” he said. “A shallow crossin’. I don’t want no cattle drowneded.”

  Whit rode off with Bill to the bank of the river and then they split up.

  The cattle grazed south of the river, but they could smell water and were kicking up a fuss. Three men held the lead cow in check and turned the others back, chasing those that jumped out of the herd and tried to head for water.

  “We can’t hold ’em much longer,” Steve yelled at Paddy.

  “Do your dadgummed job, Steve,” Paddy yelled back. “River’s too deep here.”

  Steve ran a steer down before it reached the riverbank and gave his horse its head. The cutter matched every twist and turn of the steer and diverted it from its course until it ran bellowing in protest back into the herd.

  “Hell, Paddy, how come we can’t let ’em drink before we take ’em acrost?” Harvey asked. He was out of breath because he had just chased three cows back, halfway down the wide column of cattle.

  “Harve,” Paddy said, “you’re supposed to be out scoutin’ with that spyglass.”

  “Paddy, that glass is wearin’ a hole in my eye. I ain’t seen nothin’. Fact is, you can take your telescope, wet it down, and shove it up your ass.”

  “You got a smart mouth, Harve. Gimme the glass. I’ll find somebody else to scout.”

  Harvey reached into his saddlebag and pulled out the collapsed telescope. He handed it to Paddy.

  “From here on, Harve,” Paddy said, “you ride drag.”

  “Damn it, Paddy, I’m a drover. I don’t fancy lookin’ at cattle butts and eatin’ dust all damned day.”

  “Do as I say, or draw your pay,” Paddy said. He was reaching the limit of his patience with Harvey. It was true he had not seen any of the outlaw band he suspected was following them, but it was plain that Harvey longed for human companionship and didn’t take to riding circles around the herd all by himself.

  “I’ll ride drag,” Harve said. “At least I won’t have to see your ugly face all damned day.”

  Paddy resisted the urge to retort. He understood that there were tensions among the men. They were worried about being bushwhacked, or attacked by Indians. They’d had a run-in with a farmer a couple of days ago who demanded payment for the cattle who had dumped manure in his pond. He had pointed a shotgun at Paddy, but Paddy told him he was sorry and his men would fix his fence before they moved on. The cattle didn’t always follow the leader. Sometimes they smelled new grass or hay or some other fodder and changed course. At other times, some farmer’s dogs would run out and chase them or bite at their hind legs. If they couldn’t drive the dogs away, they shot over their heads, and if that didn’t send them scampering back to their porches or kennels, they killed the dogs.

  It was all part of the drive, but it made men uneasy when they were forced to confront some unseen obstacle.

  Some of the worst times occurred when townspeople or children got word of the approaching herd and rushed out to see what all the fuss was about. Sometimes people would line up as if they were witnessing a parade, and sometimes the little boys, maybe playing hooky from school, would tease the cattle or the cowhands and there was nothing they could do about it but keep riding. They certainly weren’t going to fire their rifles over the heads of gawking onlookers or shoot cattle-teasing children.

  Harvey, even though he was riding well away from the herd, was not immune to incidents such as had happened, but such events were doubly irritating because he often had to ride away all alone with nobody to talk to or help him shoo away dogs or truant children.

  Paddy knew the herd was getting restless. He knew they could smell water and wanted to drink from the river.

  But he also knew that if he let them line up on the Canadian, some of them would wander into the current and be swept away or drowned. He didn’t have enough men to keep them all in check if they started to spread out over a mile or so, like kids in a candy store, all wanting to drink at once.

  Cows, he knew, got jealous or envious of others of their kind. If one cow was eating from a particularly lush patch of grass, other cattle would move in on them and push them away or lock horns over feeding privileges.

  Cattle, he reflected, were often like human children. They needed a firm hand to make them obey the rules of the trail.

  Downstream, Bill cut a slender limb from a willow and stripped it of bark and leaves. Upstream, Whit did the same. They would use these makeshift poles to test the depth and footing in the river when they came to a likely spot.

  Bill looked at the muddy water and knew that there had probably been a rainstorm upriver. There were chunks of grass and pieces of wood, tree limbs, a bush or two, racing and tumbling with the current. He rode for a mile, then another before he came to a bend and what looked like a sandbar somewhere just past the middle.

  His horse did not want to step into the water, despite his verbal coaxing.

  Bill rammed his roweled spurs into the horse’s flanks and it took one step toward the water, then backed away.

  “All right, you mule-headed son of a buck,” he exclaimed, and whacked the horse’s rump with the willow pole while he eased up on the bit in the horse’s mouth.

  His horse leaped into the water and it was shallow next to the bank.

  He kept digging in the spurs and urging the horse toward the elongated sandbar. He poked the pole into the water at intervals. When it touched bottom, he pushed on it. He looked down at the horse’s front hooves when they came up and just saw swirls of mud. The bottom seemed sound and never reached the horse’s belly until they had crossed the bar. Then his horse stepped into a hole and sank nearly to its withers.

  The horse floundered and his forelegs lashed out in a frantic attempt to swim. Water splashed and the horse’s hind legs found good footing and it surged forward into shallower water. He rode clear to the opposite bank, testing the bottom with his pole. The horse lunged from the river and clambered up on the low bank. It shook itself and droplets of water scattered in all directions, sunlit and fragile as tiny glass globes.

  Bill waited until his horse had calmed down, then turned its head and pointed him back toward the river. This time, he took a slightly different path and there was no deep hole all the way across. The horse scampered over the lower tip of the sandbar, then splashed its way to the bank while Bill just dragged his pole along the bottom.

  On the bank, he dismounted and ground-tie
d his horse to a small cottonwood. He threw the willow pole into the river and watched it float downstream. Then he started looking for rocks. He gathered them in different sizes. He set the largest and flattest next to the bank, then a smaller one atop it until he had built a stone cairn that could be seen when he returned with Paddy.

  Satisfied, he untied his horse and mounted up.

  Whit met him at the point where they had parted company and they rode back to the herd together.

  “Deep all the way up for two mile,” Whit said. “Did you find a ford?”

  “Yep. Don’t know how wide it is, but cattle can cross there if we line ’em up right.”

  “I hate big rivers,” Whit said as they rode along together.

  “Cattle love ’em,” Bill said with a chuckle. “And if we didn’t have ’em, there’d be no towns, no trade, no game to hunt.”

  “You got a point. But they scare hell out of me and this one is full of deadwood and scraps of grass and clumps of mud. No tellin’ what lives under that water. Maybe gators or snakes.”

  Bill laughed.

  “No gators,” he said. “And I didn’t see no snakes.”

  “That’s just it, Bill. You don’t see ’em until they bite you.”

  “Hell, I ain’t seen a water moccersin since I left Louisiana and I don’t think rattlers swim in these rivers.”

  Whit went into a mock shivering fit.

  “I don’t even want to think about rattlers,” he said.

  “Then, don’t,” Bill said, and flashed him a wide grin.

  Paddy rode out to meet them.

  “Well?” he said to both men.

  “Bill said he found us a ford downriver,” Whit said. “I didn’t see no safe place to cross upriver.”

  “I marked the spot with some rocks,” Bill said. “You’re going to have to run ’em over maybe two at a time, three or four at the most.”

  “That’s like askin’ me to drink whiskey from an eye dropper,” Paddy said. “Once I turn that lead cow loose and drive her across, the rest of the herd will jump in like a bunch of Sooner wagons at the startin’ gate. It’ll be a damned avalanche of cattle wadin’ across.”