The Omaha Trail

by Ralph Compton

  Behind him, Bill and Steve followed at a distance, their horses surging against the wind. Rain splashed off their chests. Their hooves were plopping into the tiny rivers of runoff, and water spattered onto their bellies.

  Paddy pressed on with a strong feeling of dread at the amount of water he saw running across the ground.

  Flash flooding was always a danger and a threat during a heavy rainstorm, especially when the plain was broken by gullies and ravines. And he knew they were very near the river he planned to cross into Kansas, the Caney.

  Streaks of lightning etched a zigzag pattern in the distant thunderheads. That’s when he caught a glimpse of Chub trying to turn a large steer back against the truant cattle behind it.

  He called out at the top of his lungs, “Ho, Chub, we’re right behind you.”

  Chub turned around in the saddle, but his face was dark under the hood of his slicker. He raised a hand in acknowledgment but did not try to say anything amid the peals of thunder and the roaring wind.

  Paddy spurred his horse and charged toward Toomey. He did not see Dewey just then. He urged his horse in tandem with Chub’s to drive the cattle back into the herd while avoiding their horns.

  The lead steer swung its head and tried to gore Chub’s horse. The horse sidestepped and danced out of range.

  “Stubborn bastard,” Chub yelled into the teeth of the wind.

  “Where’s Dewey?” Paddy asked.

  “Up ahead. There’s another bunch that we couldn’t turn. They were runnin’ like hell when they heard the thunder.”

  “I just hope the whole herd don’t stampede,” Paddy said, and reached down to grab one of the steer’s horns. He grasped it at the boss, but the steer jerked its head and the horn slipped through Paddy’s hand as if it had been soaked in oil.

  Paddy cursed and his horse tried to turn the steer back, but the agile whiteface charged off in another direction. The cattle behind it followed it, pushing and crowding against each other, blinded by the blowing rain. Chub and Paddy were surrounded by milling cattle and had to spur their horses to break free of the crushing bodies that surged after the runaway steer.

  “Don’t know if we can turn ’em back,” Chub yelled, once he and Paddy were free of the jostling cattle.

  “Might have to shoot that steer to stop him,” Paddy said.

  “Wouldn’t be no big loss,” Chub said.

  Bill and Steve rode up. They were drenched and dripping, but their expressions were crestfallen.

  “There’s a bunch more behind all these,” Steve said to Paddy.

  “They just keep on a-comin’,” Bill said, shaking his head. Both men had their hoods up on their slickers now. Paddy did not and he looked like a drowned rat.

  “Bill, go see if you can find Dewey and help him. If we can get part of the herd turned back, maybe the rest will follow.”

  “Where is he?” Bill asked.

  “Up ahead of me,” Chub said. “God knows where.”

  “Lot of water,” Bill said. “We could get a flash—”

  Paddy cut him off. “Don’t say it, Bill. Just get your ass up there and help Dewey. Steve, you go with him.”

  The two men rode off through curtains of rain into pitch-darkness. It seemed as if the earth or the storm had swallowed them up.

  Chub looked dejected.

  “I don’t know what we can do in this downpour,” he said to Paddy.

  “Mainly, about all we can do is let the cattle know we’re here and try to keep them from running all over creation. Let’s go after that damned steer and see if we can rope him.”

  “I ain’t never roped in no storm like this,” Chub said.

  “There’s always a first time,” Paddy said. He pulled his hood up over his hat and loosed the tie-downs on his rope. He untied them enough so that he could just jerk one strand free and grab the rope when the time came.

  Chub and Paddy trotted well ahead of the fugitive herd until they spotted the temperamental steer. It was heading blindly on a course that made no sense to Paddy. Whenever the lightning flashed, he saw no high ground, no hills. Still, he figured the steer was guided by some instinct that told it to move in a westerly direction, straight into the maw of the thunderstorm.

  “Head him off, Chub,” Paddy shouted.

  He loosened the thong that held his coiled manila rope and grasped the strands. He shook out a loop and guided his horse alongside. The steer bucked and kicked out its hind legs when Paddy’s horse came up alongside.

  “I got you now,” Paddy said as he widened the loop and dropped it over both horns. He rode on past. He jerked the rope taut, looped it around his saddle horn.

  Then he reined his horse into a wheeling angle to the side. The rope tightened and there was resistance from the steer, but the horse was stronger. It dug in its heels as Paddy thrummed its flanks with his blunt spurs and yelled into its ear. He felt the weight of the steer as it tugged on the rope, but there was no escape for the animal.

  “You got him,” yelled Chub.

  Then Paddy’s horse responded to the spurs and his master’s slaps on his rump and barreled forward. The horse jerked the steer to the ground and Paddy turned him again to drag the cow away from the others. It slid through water and mud, bawling and kicking, trying to get to its feet. It dug one horn into the ground and the horse pulled it free. The white face of the steer was spattered with mud so that it appeared to be freckled.

  Paddy started taking up rope, loosening it from his saddle horn until the steer was nearly under his horse. He kept the rope tight.

  “See if you can put a dally on that steer’s hind legs, Chub,” he ordered. He panted, nearly out of breath.

  Chub grabbed a short piece of rope and jumped from his horse. He rammed into the steer’s butt, sat on it, and grabbed both hind legs by the ankles. He jerked the rope from his teeth and bound the hind legs together, formed a slipknot, and jerked the rope until it was tight. The steer struggled, but it could only groan and lie there as the rain spattered on his wild eyes until he closed them and stopped struggling.

  “Now let’s turn them cows back into the herd,” Paddy said.

  He and Chub charged the oncoming cattle and turned them. Cows in the rear began to turn and trot back to the main herd.

  Paddy turned loose of the rope and let it fall with a splash onto the wet ground.

  He and Chub got the cattle into a run. He thought that the thunder behind them helped. When they saw the herd, it was up and moving north, very slowly. The cattle they had rounded up melted into the flow of cattle, and both men turned their horses.

  “Now what?” Chub asked.

  “Let’s go back and help Dewey.”

  “This rain is like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock,” Chub griped. “I ain’t never seen so much water fall all at once.”

  “This is just a regular spring rain,” Paddy cracked, but when he saw Chub’s drenched face, he nodded in agreement.

  The two men rode back toward where they thought Dewey and the other two hands might be. As they passed the hog-tied steer, both looked at it as they passed.

  “What about Frisky there?” Chub asked.

  “We’ll pick him up when we’ve got the other loose cattle back in the main herd,” Paddy said.

  They heard shouts from up ahead and soon they saw Dewey, Bill, and Steve surrounding six or eight head of cattle. They had them turned and were driving them back toward the main herd.

  “You got all of ’em, Dew?” Paddy asked.

  “I think so. Hard to see in this wet stuff.”

  “Good job,” Paddy said.

  He and Chub took opposite flanks and the cattle responded to the herding by heading out single file as docile as farm-bred Guernseys.

  Later, he and Bill returned for the steer that was drowning in mud and water. Bill jumped down and removed the dally. He handed the rope up to Paddy. Paddy jerked the steer to its feet and they led it back to the rear of the herd, where Pete Summers was riding drag.

/>   The wagons and the remuda remained where they had been as the herd moved on like sleepwalkers, their heads drooping, their hides soaked, their feet plopping into puddles of mud and water.

  The storm clouds moved over them and drifted eastward. Lightning lashed at the prairie, and the thunder rolled toward the east, its booming roars fading in the distance.

  Chub and Paddy took the point, staying close to the lead cow with her clanking bell sounding like a buoy off some lonesome seashore.

  The rain continued to pelt down, but the wind eased up around midnight.

  “Should we bed ’em down, Paddy?” Chub asked as he began to see a few stars break through in the western sky.

  “Give ’em a while yet,” Paddy said. “I have a hunch we’ll see Dane come mornin’.”

  “Think he’d be ridin’ at night in weather like this?”

  “I don’t know. Dane is his own man. If he’s ridin’ alone, he might. If he’s got Joe Eagle with him, maybe not.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause Joe would find some shelter and wait it out, I think.”

  “Why?” Chub asked.

  “’Cause Injuns don’t like rain and they don’t like dark.”

  “Hmm,” Chub snorted.

  Paddy didn’t know if he was right, but he knew he would begin to feel better if Dane did come and join them. Two of his men had been killed already and he didn’t want to lose any more hands. Yet he knew he had to get the herd to Omaha and couldn’t stop to fight off a bunch of rustling gunfighters.

  Dane, likely, would know what to do.

  And, after all, it was Dane’s cattle that they were driving. He had more to lose than any of them.

  Paddy knew too that Dane did not like to lose.

  Chapter 35

  Daybreak.

  A wan sun rising in the east on a pale cool dawn. Disgruntlement in the outlaw camp. Soggy bedrolls, wet socks, soaked clothing, water on the ground, horses shivering, men complaining, Concho’s mood as dark as the night had been.

  “We’ll never get dried out,” Lyle said, pouring water out of his boot.

  “Firewood’s all wet,” Mitch said.

  “Blow on it,” cracked Logan.

  “Fan it with your wet hat, Mitch,” Will said as he squeezed water out of his own battered Stetson.

  “Where’s Skip?” Concho asked. He had his shirt off and was putting on a dry one he had found at the bottom of one of his saddlebags.

  “Should be ridin’ in with his report pretty soon,” Lyle said. “He lit out about an hour or so ago. I could hear his feet squishing inside his boots.”

  Nobody laughed.

  They had all spent a miserable night, with no shelter from the wind or the rain. Concho had ordered Skip to check on the trail herd before sunup. The rest of them had huddled together with their slickers pulled up over their faces, their heads on rolled-up saddle blankets. Horses that were hobbled jumped at every lightning bolt or rumble of thunder. Miserable.

  The sky was still overcast. Layers of gray, batten-shaped clouds lay from horizon to horizon, silent and brooding, somber as dirty cotton.

  “Can anybody start a damned fire?” Logan asked.

  The men shook their heads. There was no paper, no dry firewood, no kindling.

  Logan rubbed his hands together and shook each foot in turn to warm his toes. That didn’t work, so he stomped around in a circle, stamping each boot down hard.

  “Rider comin’ from the east,” Mitch announced.

  They all looked and saw a solitary rider, his horse at a fast walk, break the bleak line of the horizon. He was bent over in a slump, but they recognized him.

  “That’s Skip, I reckon,” Will said. His lips were bluish and his complexion was as bland and empty as a bowl of oatmeal. His arms were wrapped around his waist for warmth, but his fingers were gaunt and bloodless, the skin wrinkled as if he had soaked them in cold vinegar.

  “He’s sure takin’ his sweet time,” chimed in Lyle. He held up his bedroll and shook it. Water drops flew in the air like tiny beads of sweat.

  “He looks like a drowned rat,” Mitch said.

  Concho scowled but said nothing.

  Skip rode up a few minutes later. His eyes were red around the rim of his iris, and there were dark smudges under both eyes. He dismounted and his legs gave way. Concho caught him before he fell.

  “Lord, what a night,” Skip said. “I never saw so much rain and the wind like to have blown me off my horse.”

  “There ain’t no hot coffee, Skip,” Concho said, “so tell me what you saw, where the herd’s at, and what all happened last night.”

  Skip managed to stand on his own and he broke away from Concho. Lyle took his reins and began to rub the horse’s neck and withers. Water pooled up with each scrape of his hand and dripped to the ground.

  “That herd started movin’ right after the storm hit,” Skip said. “Some of ’em run off and the hands had a hell of a time roundin’ ’em up. Herd kept movin’ and they’re headed for the Caney. I reckon they’ll cross into Kansas by tonight or tomorrow.”

  “They moved the herd all night?” Concho asked.

  “They didn’t move fast, but they didn’t stop movin’, Concho. I swear. You couldn’t see five foot in front of your face, but I follered the cattle by listening to the hands all a-yellin’ and chasin’ back strays. Just before I come back, they got their wagons movin’ and I saw that Mex take the hobbles off the remuda and get them a’movin’.”

  “So they’re headed for the Caney,” Concho said.

  Skip nodded. “They ought to hit it by noon or soon after,” he said.

  Concho turned to Mitch. “This looks like your chance, Mitch. You ought to catch up with that herd in an hour or so. Take one man down.”

  “Any man?” Mitch asked.

  “No. Don’t shoot Paddy and leave the cook and the wagon driver alone. Same with that Mex wrangler. You knock down one of the outriders. Make it easy on yourself. Plan it all out so’s you can get away and leave a dead man lyin’ in the rain puddles.”

  “I can do ’er,” Mitch said. “I’ll saddle up.”

  “The rest of you saddle up too,” Concho ordered. “I want to get up into Kansas and find a place along the Caney. Maybe we can grab that herd just when that Mick Paddy is startin’ to cross it. We can turn the herd before they hit the ford.”

  “Maybe we can find some dry firewood up in Kansas,” Lyle said.

  “Don’t count on it,” Concho said.

  Mitch saddled his horse before any of the others and started out after he checked his rifle and wiped it down with a dry bandanna.

  “So long,” he said.

  “See you up on the Caney, Mitch,” Concho said. “Look for us west of the river.”

  Mitch nodded and rode off.

  The others finished saddling their horses. They set their saddles on wet blankets and wrung out their clothes and bedrolls. A half hour later, they were riding north toward the Kansas border under a sky as gray as a dove’s wing. They rode single file with Concho in the lead. He was veering ever eastward a few degrees at a time.

  There was no need to hurry, Concho knew. If Mitch did his job, that would slow the herd while the Circle K hands buried another cowhand. He figured that Paddy would not try to go around the Caney, but would take the herd up along the river so that the cattle could drink before he looked for a ford. That was the time and place to hit him. On the way back to Shawnee Mission, they could rustle the other herd and he’d have three thousand head to hand over to Throckmorton. Then he would collect thirty thousand and divide the money among the men. He had already planned to keep the lion’s share of the money for himself. But his men would have a decent payday, and if any of them didn’t like it, they could eat lead and forfeit their shares.

  He felt good that they were getting close. That storm had taken a lot of the fire out of the men and they needed to dry out and do some work.

  “You know,” he said to Lyle, who rode
alongside him, “I feel like Robin Hood.”

  “Robin Hood?” Lyle said, surprised at the statement.

  “Yeah,” Concho said. “You know the English outlaw, that old story.”

  “I remember it. He used a bow and arrow, I think.”

  “Don’t make no difference. I’m just like him.”

  “How so?” Lyle asked.

  “I rob from the rich to feed the poor.”

  Both men laughed.

  The others, riding behind them, wondered what was so funny. They were all cold and wet and saw nothing to laugh at. They made faces at one another and shrugged their shoulders.

  The horses splashed on past small lakes of standing water and bare spots where flash floods had arisen and swept the rocks and brush into the gullies and ravines.

  The land there was desolate and empty, with no signs of life.

  Doves flew past, their wings whistling, and they flushed a rabbit or two. In the distance, they heard the whistle of a prairie dog sentinel and then it was quiet except for the thunk of the horses’ hooves and the rustle of their clothes drying out under the lash of the fresh breeze that sprang up out of nowhere.

  Skip rode in the rear, exhausted.

  When he looked at the line of men on horseback, he thought to himself that they resembled somber men in a funeral procession.

  And he felt like one of the mourners.

  Chapter 36

  Joe Eagle read part of the story in the muddy tracks when he and Dane came upon the place where Paddy had bedded down the herd the night before.

  The muddy ground was littered with cow and horse tracks. As Dane watched, Joe rode all over, sometimes disappearing, only to reappear. Dane looked at the maze of tracks and knew that he could never figure out what had gone on there. But at least, he thought, there was no fresh grave anywhere that he looked.

  Joe finally rode back and reined up his horse next to Dane’s.

  “You saw things I didn’t, Joe. Is there a story to tell here?”

  “Hmm. Me read story. Herd not stay here long. Cattle run off. Men drive cattle back. Wagons stay long time, then move.”