Return to Red River

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Edna hadn’t been like most of The Donegal’s girls. Quiet and reserved. Ashamed of what she had to do for a living. Never really hung out with most of the women, back in Memphis or on that train to Nevada. Bettymay—now Tess could not remember that girl’s last name—had been helping Tess with Edna until the wheel broke, the prairie schooner lurched, and Bettymay broke her arm.

  She turned again and stared at her husband, grayer now, though not much heavier. Harder, perhaps. He had been devilishly handsome in those days—still was, at least in Tess’s eyes—but on that night, in the rain, in the stampede, twenty years ago, he had been so much like a little boy. Pale. Mouth open. And when Edna had bent down and grabbed his hair with one hand, and dug her nails into the back of his neck with another, he had wailed out questions like a kid, begging to know what he was supposed to do, what he needed to do, what should he do. Then there was the baby, and Tess had wrapped him in some blanket or petticoat or maybe it had been the silk cloth of a dance-hall dress. She couldn’t remember. But she had put the baby in Mathew’s arms so she could finish, cutting the cord with a pocketknife, cleaning everything up, listening outside to the shots, the curses, the hooves.

  And the rain.

  “You did good that night, Mathew,” she told him.

  He set his empty cup in the mud. “You did good,” he said, and turned toward her. “The past twenty years, you’ve done well. Real well.”

  She let him lean over and kiss her. She pulled him closer and kissed back. Not long. Not long enough, for her, but she was the one who pulled away.

  Her emerald eyes sparkled.

  “Now do you wish Miguel Martinez was driving your damned hoodlum wagon?” she asked.

  He laughed, patted her hand, and crawled from beneath the wagon. The rain had begun to slacken.

  * * *

  The water was good for the next two days. Then, Texas looked like it hadn’t seen moisture since Noah had loaded his ark. This was the country between the Concho rivers and Comanche Springs at Fort Stockton. Barren. Waterless. What the sun did not blister, the wind did. For two days, they saw no water except what was in the barrels on the two wagons and in their own canteens.

  Tess had to pull on the lines to stop the mules. Quickly, she set the brake, before digging in her pockets for a handkerchief. As she wiped her eyes, she heard the hooves of a horse that reined up beside her.

  “Here.”

  Blinking, she saw Mathew, his gloved right hand extended toward her. “Salt,” he said. “You need it.”

  She took what she could and put it in her mouth. Her lips mouthed her thanks.

  He licked the remnants from his filthy gloves.

  “You need a bandanna,” he said, his voice raspy. “Should have realized that before.” When he began to unloosen his own, she tried to stop him, but he shook her off. “I’ve a spare or two,” he told her, “in my war bag.”

  She tied the piece of silk around her neck.

  “Want some water?” he asked.

  Her head shook. A lie, of course. She could have swallowed a quart in one gulp.

  His grin must have hurt his chapped lips, but he did not show any discomfort. “Better take a swallow.” Now he held out his canteen.

  She took a small sip. The warm water and the salt burned her tongue and throat, but revived her spirits.

  “More.” His voice came out harder now. “We have water. Drink it.”

  Well, he was the boss of the herd, so she obeyed him. This time. After stoppering the canteen, she returned it to him. He surprised her by taking a drink himself, and she had to wonder if he did that only for her sake. As he returned the strap of the canteen to his horn, he looked back at the herd. Tess just stared into the endless, flat hell that was known as West Texas. The mountains lay behind them now, and the mesas. Twin Buttes should be ahead of them somewhere, but she saw only sand, cactus, twisted mesquite.

  “Is it . . . ?” Just speaking hurt. “Always . . . like this?”

  “Yeah.” He wiped his mouth. “Here anyway.” He made a vague gesture.

  “Water up ahead, though,” he said. “At Big Lake.”

  The name alone gave her even more strength. “Big . . . Lake,” she said dreamily.

  His laugh was cracked. “Don’t set your hopes too high, Tess. It ain’t that big. And many times, it ain’t a lake. But it will be this time. After that big deluge we had back at the Pecos.”

  He dismounted, held his reins toward her, and when Tess took them, he climbed into the back of the hoodlum wagon, moving over tarps that covered the war bags. He found his own and withdrew a calico cotton bandanna, blue, red, and yellow, and tied it around his own neck. Again, she had to wonder if he did that for her, to make her feel better. Then she decided that she really didn’t care. She had water. And salt. And felt a damned sight better.

  When he was back in the saddle, he smiled at her and kicked the horse into a trot, heading back to the herd.

  * * *

  Mathew had not lied about Big Lake.

  Oh, the lake was big. It covered two sections, probably more, but most of the depression held only cracked earth, scorpions, and bleached bones of horses, cattle, and men.

  No river. No ditch. No underground spring. No outlet at all. Big Lake was a playa, holding water, if only briefly, by collecting runoff from a giant rainstorm. In the rainy season, travelers would regularly find water, but during other times, they might find mud, if they were lucky.

  Two miles before the giant playa, the longhorns caught the scent of the water. So did the horses in the remuda. Certainly, Tess believed, the mules pulling the hoodlum wagon could smell the water. Riding well ahead of the cattle, Tess had a hard time keeping the mules under control. For a while, it felt as if she and Groot were racing their wagons across the flat, sunbaked land.

  Then she saw it, not understanding what it was at first. Shimmering in the distance, reflecting the pale blue sky overhead. And in an instant, she could smell the water herself.

  Groot pulled the chuck wagon ahead, parking it briefly at the edge of the playa, where he began to fill the water barrels. “Quick!” he told her when she set the brake. “We needs to get the barrels filled up afore the herd muddies ever’thin’ to hell an’ gone.”

  She understood, and used her hat as a ladle, dumping water—rainwater held in this lake that could not have been more than two or three feet deep. When the barrels and extra canteens could hold no more, Groot pointed.

  “We’ll make camp for the boys at the far end over yonder. Longhorns will muddy this all up before long. Up there, it’ll stay clear, plateable.”

  Plateable? Her mind finally grasped Groot’s language. Palatable. They took the wagons to the northeasternmost point. No shade. But water, and beyond the water, acres and acres of scorched earth. Tess went about unhitching the mules, letting them cool off before they drank. Then she picketed them with the mules Groot had already picketed from the chuck wagon. She looked well past the playa, back toward the west and south, where Mathew, Lightning, and Tom would be moving the herd. She couldn’t see the cattle, the horses, or men. Only the dust that told her that they would be here shortly.

  Something shot past her. Tess blinked, not sure. White legs. Sunburned face. She had to blink two or three times before she understood what she had just seen.

  It was Groot Nadine, stripped down to his blackened socks and well-ventilated long johns. He was running from the chuck wagon to the water.

  He yelled something over his shoulder as he leaped, and laughed, landing with a hard splash in shallow rainwater.

  “C’mon!” he bellowed. “Water’s damned near perfect!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Texas longhorns, more than three thousand strong, in a shallow playa that stretched across maybe four hundred acres. Sometimes, during the really rainy seasons, that lake would fill the entire two sections—1,280 acres. Having slaked their thirst, some cattle had moved out of the water to graze, or find what passed for shade in t
his vast emptiness. Others just stood in the water.

  The horses and mules had been watered, too, and two cowhands—Alvaro Cuevas and John Meeker Jr.—remained in the saddle to keep the herd from muddying up all of the lake. Every water barrel, every canteen, had already been filled, and every one would be refilled at dawn the next morning before men and animals pushed on north.

  Unless they stayed an extra day.

  Tom Garth soaked his bandanna in the coffee cup he had filled with water from Big Lake, and kept dabbing the cotton against his cracked lips. He sat with his back against the rear wheel of the chuck wagon, staring back at the playa. It had to rank among the most amazing sights he had ever seen.

  All those cattle . . . the wide lake . . . the endless sky without one cloud . . . the reflection of the longhorns in the blue water, making the herd seem even more enormous than it was . . . and the sinking of the orange globe off in the distant horizon.

  An itinerant photographer had brought his wagon, big camera, and those heavy glass plates to Dunson City a year or two back. Tom and Lightning had each paid a dollar to get four tintypes. Lightning had not been impressed with his photograph.

  “I ain’t left-handed,” he had told the photographer.

  “The image is always reversed,” the photographer, a young man with a pockmarked face and bowler hat, had tried to explain. “But it is a good likeness of you.”

  “I like the one of my grandpa better,” Lightning had said, and gestured toward the portrait hanging in the hotel lobby, where the photographer had set up his temporary studio.

  “That is a portrait, sir,” said the photographer—he hailed all the way from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was making his way to Mesilla, New Mexico Territory—“and merely how the painter imagined your grandfather, sir.”

  “It looks more like him than this does of me,” Lightning had shot back.

  “But that is you.”

  Lightning had rebutted. “A left-handed me.”

  Tom, on the other hand, had not even noticed the reversed image—but, then, he had not buckled on his gun belt for his portrait. And he had seen the landscapes and buildings and photographs of cowboys and horses and even locomotives that the photographer had tacked up on a board to advertise his abilities. It was too windy to photograph anyone outside, the young man had explained.

  Now as Tom watched the cattle as the sun slowly began to set, he felt not one wisp of wind. That Baton Rouge gent would have captured an amazing picture had he been here today.

  “We could let the herd and horses water up another day.”

  Laredo Downs’s voice snapped Tom from his daydreaming. He lifted his head and lowered his wet bandanna to see his father, Downs, and Joe Nambel around the fire, sipping hot coffee instead of lukewarm water. Lightning walked up to join the three men, without an invitation, but no one objected.

  “We move on tomorrow,” Mathew said.

  Anyone could see that neither Laredo nor Nambel liked Mathew’s answer.

  “Those were some hard days on the trail, Mathew,” Laredo said. “A rest might do us all some good.”

  Joe Nambel’s head bobbed in agreement. “Sore-footed beeves and horses don’t move so good.”

  “Neither do soggy beef.”

  No one argued further on that point.

  “What about letting the boys take a bath?” Nambel asked.

  Mathew sipped coffee, considering the idea for what seemed an hour or more, but probably took only a couple of seconds. His head shook. “Water’s for drinking.”

  “Groot took a bath,” Lightning sang out in objection.

  Maybe the three older men had not even noticed that Lightning had joined them, for now they studied Lightning in fierce silence.

  At last, Mathew grinned. “Groot needed a bath.”

  Which brought smiles to the faces of Laredo and Nambel.

  “And Ma?”

  Now all eyes turned to Tom, who hadn’t realized he had spoken loud enough for anyone to hear.

  “Well . . .” Tom tried to find his voice. “I’m not saying that Ma needs a bath . . . but . . . well . . . there’s water. And . . . well . . . there’s water . . .”

  “Yeah,” Lightning chimed in. “At least Ma should get a bath.”

  “And . . .” Tom suddenly fell quiet. He knew his mother, even as old as she was, remained strikingly beautiful. And Tom was old enough, experienced enough from his trips to Gloria’s Palace, to know that putting one woman with a dozen or so men . . . “Maybe it ain’t such a good idea,” he said. He tried to think of a lie. “I mean, if you let Ma take a bath, then we’d all have to take a bath. Muddy up the water.”

  He dabbed his lips with his bandanna.

  “Ain’t deep water, neither,” he added.

  “Well,” Lightning said. “We’ll be in San Angelo directly. Reckon we can all take a bath when we ride into town.”

  “You won’t be riding into town.” Mathew spoke sharply. “You’ll be staying with the herd.”

  “But . . . Pa,” Lightning whined.

  “No buts.”

  “Boys could use a whiskey,” Nambel said.

  “I’ll buy them all the whiskey they can handle,” Mathew said. “In Dodge City. And not before.” He emptied the dregs of the coffee by the coals, then sent the tin cup sailing into the wreck pan, which startled Groot as he cut out biscuit dough.

  “Criminy, we haven’t even reached the Concho River and you boys want baths, whiskeys, and vacation. You hired on to do a job. I’m seeing you to it. The job is to get this herd to Dodge City. Not San Angelo.”

  “I’m just sayin’ . . .” Joe Nambel started, but Mathew cut him off.

  “You know San Angelo. Need I say more?”

  Lightning shook his head, but had enough sense to keep his trap shut. But Tom figured that he understood. Although he had heard that some priests tried to set up a mission there hundreds of years ago, the town hadn’t really been settled until right after the War Between the States, when the Yankee army set up Fort Concho—named after the three rivers—the North, South, and Middle Concho—that made this patch of Texas inhabitable. First, it had been called Saint Angela, or Santa Angela, until that got shortened to San Angela. That stuck for a while until someone pointed out that, in Spanish, San Angela was grammatically incorrect, so the town’s name became San Angelo. No matter what it was called, another name seemed more fitting because “saints” had little to do with San Angelo.

  Hell Town.

  Soldiers fought townsmen, cowboys, and each other on the streets. Cowboys fought each other and sheepherders. Sheepherders fought. Townsmen fought. Gamblers fought each other. Whores fought each other. In a couple of years, the railroad was expected to reach San Angelo, so railroaders could join the fight. Hardly a week passed without a knifing or a shooting. Hardly a night went by without some sort of row in a saloon or out on the streets. Tom could see why his father found it necessary to keep the trail crew out of town. He didn’t want to have to post anyone’s bail . . . or pay for a funeral.

  “What about supplies?” Laredo asked.

  Mathew must have been anticipating the question because he answered immediately.

  “If we need supplies, Groot will go to town. And only Groot.” He paused, reflectively, and changed his mind. “No, your mother will go. With Groot. And me.”

  Tom figured it out. His mother would get her bath in the privacy of a bathhouse in San Angelo. His father and Groot would be there for protection.

  “And when we leave San Angelo,” Laredo said, “which direction will we go?”

  “Same as I told you before, Laredo. Northeast.”

  “North is quicker,” Nambel said. “The Western Trail, Doan’s Store on the Red, and—”

  “Northeast,” Mathew said. “Jesse Chisholm’s trail and Red River Station.”

  “Hell.” Laredo Downs sent his own coffee cup ringing in the wreck pan.

  “Hey!” Groot raised his rolling pin. “I can recollect a dropped cup
causin’ a stampede, Laredo. Quit actin’ like some tenderfeet. And you bend one of my cups, and I’ll be bendin’ your ears back, boy.”

  If Laredo heard the old cook, he didn’t appear to notice. “Why not just take the herd all the way to Missouri, Mister Dunson.”

  “If not for the quarantine, we might just do that.”

  “Hell’s fire, Mathew. You’re the hardest rock I know.”

  “You want out, Laredo, saddle up and ride on.”

  Laredo stared at the mud on his boots.

  “I ain’t no quitter, Mathew,” he said softly. His head lifted, and he found Groot. “Didn’t mean to lose my temper, Groot. C’mon, Joe. Let’s spell Meeker and Cuevas. Get a little fresh air.”

  Usually, Tom Garth found the jingling of spurs musical, relaxing, but not on this evening. It had to be his imagination, but the tune sounded more like a dirge as Joe Nambel and Laredo Downs walked toward the picketed horses.

  “Anything you want to say, Lightning?” his father was asking his brother.

  “I ain’t said nothing, Pa. Just about Ma getting a bath and all.”

  Mathew did not seem to hear.

  “I’ve said why we’re going on the old Chisholm Trail . . . at least till we reach the Cut-Off in the Nations. There won’t be as many herds, the grass will be better, and if anyone’s following us, they won’t be expecting us to take the long way. You savvy that?”

  “Why would anyone be following us, Pa?” Lightning asked.

  “To kill us, Lightning. To steal the herd.”

  Tom cleared his throat. His father and brother whirled, eyes boring through his body.

  “Well . . . ?” Mathew barked.

  Tom had never seen his father like that. Those eyes seemed . . . wild. Like the mad dog they had had to kill a couple of falls back. Or . . .

  He felt as if he were back in Dunson City, standing in the lobby of the Dunson City Hotel, looking up at that wonderful portrait of “Thomas Dunson, Empire Builder, Texas Giant.”

  That man who stood there . . . his father . . . was a stranger.

  “I’m going to talk to your mother,” Mathew said. “After supper, you two spell Laredo and Joe.”